[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Trenien

Essentially, the control given by copyright was supposed to cover distribution for money. It's a monopoly given by the state over it and goes no further.

Sure. It's still a level of ownership and control.

Although I tend to be a proponent to the ending of copyright, I don't think that as a solution to that problem. The problem itself has made me reconsider what copyright implies, and pointed the way toward works that convincingly demonstrate its vaunted benefits may not be as real as we've been taught they are. Meanwhile, the problems it raises (which were recognised as such by its creators) keep getting bigger with time.

The next question becomes "If copyright goes away, how do you insure creators can get paid for the work?"

I don't think the model proposed by some of the open source advocates, which works out to "programmers should be paid for writing code, but not for having written it" is applicable to books.

Actually, if I want to access copyrighted work, I'm sufficiently computer savy to be able to do so with such a level of anonymity for the risks to be negligible. That's not my point.

So am I, and it wasn't my point either.

My point is that since our computers are under linux, my wife and I have to jump through hoops if we want to buy ebooks for our readers - to the point that it's a chore we delay as long as we may before getting to it.

That's not a problem caused by copyright: it's a problem caused by poor support for Linux by folks selling ebooks. I'd rail at them.

(I'd also be tempted to keep a minimal Widows install around and run it under something like VMWare to handle such cases. Poor support for stuff like this under Linux is a reason I don't run it, even though I'm a *nix admin, and can. Too much of what I do is a PITA to do under Linux, if it's doable at all.)

My point is that we, as a society, are being robbed of our collective heritage for the benefit of a few - and that's true even for folktales (just try to make a big SnowWhite or Beauty and the Beast movie. You'd better be reaaally careful in the way you make it).

Whenever something is perceived as having a large potential monetary value, this will happen. There will be interested parties who will want to stake a claim, and having staked it, hold it. I don't realistically see that going away.
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Dennis