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Originally Posted by tenebrae
Pirating is just a way of gratifying the self. It does not change the world for the better.
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Edgar Rice Burroughs has been dead for over 50 years. Yet the vast majority of his works are still under copyright because of the current length of copyright.
How does this change the world for the better?
The works are not currently in print and haven't been in print for quite some time. If you want to read these works, you need to seek out your local used book store and hope that they still have a copy (doubtful since most of these seem to be very cheaply made paperbacks).
Over time, these physical copies will be destroyed - after all, nothing lasts forever.
People want to read these books and they want to continue reading them, so they do the only thing left: pirate them. They take their physical copies and OCR them and proofread them, and share them with others who want to read these works.
Who got hurt by this?
Burroughs didn't. He's dead.
The copyright holder was hurt, but since he's not publishing the works, he obviously thinks that the copyrights aren't worth anything (or doesn't even know he has the copyright), so he wasn't hurt much.
How does this change the world for the better?
Because millions of people get to experience Burroughs work.
Had these books been fitted with some sort of DRM, they might be lost completely. And that definately wouldn't change the world for the better.
But the whole purpose for copyright was to let authors share their works with the world. If copyright didn't exist, authors wouldn't share for fear of having their works stolen.
Today copyright has been turned into a means of hording - not sharing. It's an unjust law and copyright holders (again, not authors) should not be surprised when people don't respect it.