Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
This no longer applies in the same way because of eBooks. Suppose that the US copyright term was set at thirty years. Then www.gutenberg.org would quickly put up loads of popular books by living British authors. It seems to me that this would result in a unilateral reduction of copyright not just in the US, but in all English-speaking countries.
Project Gutenberg could put up a notice saying that visitors should consult their national copyright laws, but they wouldn't have to, and I don't think such notices are effective. Lots of Europeans who would never go to something like Pirate Bay would keep on freely downloading from Project Gutenberg, making profitable sale of those eBooks almost impossible.
The US is in a different situation here than most countries. New Zealand going to a thirty year copyright might not greatly harm foreign authors. But a low US copyright period would effectively force the same for English language literature worldwide. |
You have a point, but.
Are we to believe that authors would be saying to themselves " I guess I better not write another book, if I'm only going to collect on it for thirty years."
Luck;
Ken