Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's all a bit daft, to my mind. To expect that the average person is going to know what they're legally allowed to download or not download is expecting a bit much.
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This is one of the reasons I wish public domain were universal. It'd also be nice to have a shorter copyright. I don't know much about the laws, and as far as literature is concerned, am really not personally affected so as to join campaigns and such.
But I can see many of today's books going into obscurity, unsold, in 20 years or so, because of stories being "out of date". This even happens with books that were written as much as 20 years ago.
I've read reviews of such books, from people born around the time my children were born indicating they were required to read them in school and they were so out of date and "boring". "Why didn't the victim just dial 911 on her cell phone?"
So many people even here in MR confess to using the Project Gutenberg and MR, and the like as a
last resort because they can't afford the "books they really want", when I think that some of the greatest trailblazers in literature are there. For me it was like being handed what I always wanted. These are some of my "desert island" reads. It's like waking up every day and having my favorite guitarist ask me which song he is to play at my beck and call.
To go from maxing out my birthday money and still not obtaining all the books on my wish list to some website saying, "Here you go, all legal and all free" is like wow! I see so many people discovering some of the greats they would have otherwise brushed aside had they not been downloadable for free.