Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
There is no incentive. It's a matter of property rights. Books belong to the copyright holders and it should be up them to determine disposition.
I see no difference between land and books. If land can be passed on generation after generation, then so should books.
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Books do NOT belong to the copyright holder. You might wish them to, but they do not. What the copyright holder owns is a limted time governmentally granted monopoly on copying the book. The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation. Copyright does let authors gain financially from their works, but that is not the purpose of copyright, it is a means to an end.
Books are not analogous to land. Physical property exists even if government does not. Without government, you can lock your gates to protect property. Copyright, on the other hand is meaningless without government. If copyright should be eternal, then so should patents. But if patents were eternal, we would be lucky to even have the steam engine.
If you have a house, I can't take that house from you. Even if there is no government to enforce property laws, you can lock your doors. But if I look at your house and say "I'd like to make one like that," there's nothing that prevents me from building one just like yours. I haven't taken anything away from you by building a house just like yours. But the government might decide that it is beneficial to grant you the exclusive right to build houses like that, to encourage more house designing. But it is an exchange. In exchange for this governmentally granted monopoly, after a certain amount of time, that monopoly expires.
Feel free to forgo copyright protection. Some inventors forgo patenting their work, thinking that they can benefit more my keeping it a trade secret. In principle, trade secrets can keep the technology secret forever. Until it gets leaked of course, the risk of using trade secrets is that you aren't protected in case it gets out. If it weren't for the fact that books have to be read with human eyes, someone could possibly create a workable DRM that would be the equivalent of trade secrets.
If you really believe that the expiration of copyright and patents is "theft", then you recieve stolen goods every time you read public domain books, and you recieve stolen goods every time you use technology which has borrowed from expired patents. The differences between physical and intellectual property is clear, even if you do not wish to see them.