Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But the point is that you have the right to set the price of that manuscript. You have the absolute and exclusive right; nobody else. You can say "you have to pay me $100 if you want to read my book" and all anyone else can do is decide whether or not to pay it. They don't have the right to say "it's not worth $100 so I'm just going to take it anyway". That's the whole point of copyright. Yes, you may well write a lousy book which nobody wants to pay for - that's something the market will decide for itself - but the right to determine the price of your work is vested by the law in you, as the author, not in the reader.
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Harry, in one sense I agree and in another sense I don't. In the rest of the world of exchange of labor for money, each trade is a one of. I trade one day of programming for $320. The person/organisation that buys my one day of labor can use the results forever, in whatever manner they want, even if they post it on the web for anybody to use. I got my $320 dollars. I get no residuals, no matter if the purchaser makes $50 million dollars off of my day's labor.
However, under the copyright laws, if I work one day making a limerick, if I sell it to a publisher for a book for $320, I can expect to get royalties from it, for as long as people want to buy the book. My kids would get the royalties later, probably my grandkids would as well. If my limerick is real, real, popular, it might rack up a million dollars in sales over that time, of which I and my heirs and assigns get a cut.
I have the right to price my labor in both cases. I get the same up-front money in both cases. I have been "paid" in both cases. How come the limerick keeps paying and paying and my programming doesn't. Why is one class of labor so superior to another class of labor. Yet many people insist most strongly that to bring up this point is to attack the foundation of civilization. I understand the
law involved, but I am talking about the morality involved.