Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Suppose Rowling just told the press that she'd written (and copywritten) a new Potter novel... and that she refused to release it. So: Now you know. Millions of people want the book that she won't release. Do you have the right to demand she release it? Does the government have the right to make her release it, or take it from her?
Thing is, the public simply doesn't have the right to take someone else's legally-owned property, and with very few exceptions, no right to tell them what they can or cannot do with it. Period.
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Governments take legally-owned property all the time, and vigorously defend their supposed right to do so. The City of Scottsdale basically turned half of my lot into a nature park without paying me a nickel, which is one reason I no longer live there. In truth, property ownership is a lot more complicated than that, and intellectual property more complicated still. There is such a thing as pre-emptive licensing (which can be seen as the government's insistence that people stop paralyzing a market and actually make money) and on the balance I think it's done far more good than harm.
In my view, copyright protection is basically a trade: The author agrees to make works available to the public for a fee, and the government puts its monopoly of power at the service of the author to protect his/her monopoly on selling that work. Sitting on a work unbalances that trade, and forces the public to pay the cost of enforcing a monopoly while getting nothing in return.
This applies to published works, and the notion of
publishing a work is key. If Ms. Rowling wanted to keep her novel to herself without publishing it, that's fine, but the protection would not be copyright protection, since no copying was ever permitted at all. (I would think it would fall closer to the realm of trade secrets.)
The idea behind copyright is to keep authors prospering and the realm of knowledge and literature expanding. I'm completely fine with that, and I actually make a fair bit of money on my copyrights. I do not, however, object to a requirement that a work remain available (for a fee) to remain in copyright. The capital costs of print publishing made this impractical until very recently, but with services like Lulu and IUniverse now available, no work ever has to completely leave public access.
The notion that rightsholders might have to be
forced to make money is an interesting one--but taxes pay for copyright's legal machinery. I think protection-for-availability is a damned fine trade.