Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
As a basic question, why do you think the copyright holder should decide what is preserved and what is not? A copyright holder may have no interest in preserving a particular book that isn't valuable at the time, but future generations may think it's valuable, even as just a historical example of what was published in some decade in the past.
The issue is really that what benefits society as a whole and what benefits a copyright holder don't necessarily overlap in every instance. And since copyright is a limited set of rights that are designed to benefit society as a whole, I think it makes more sense that copyright owners don't get to pick and choose what should be preserved.
Even more basic though, is how allowing preservation over the objections of a copyright holder hurts that copyright holder. It doesn't. Google, or any other company that decides to do book scanning for preservation, can't suddenly start selling the books (that is a right that the copyright holder has); however, they can make those books available decades in the future when the copyright has expired.
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Isn't that basically what I said in the snippet you quoted?
While the copyright holder holds the right I think it is their decision to make.
And that the books are being preserved, in fact they have been preserved or Google could not further preserve them.
And while the Mona Lisa and Shakespeare and others things such as Barbie dolls (I am not saying Barbie Dolls are as important as the Mona Lisa
although to me they were at one time and are an IMO as much an indicator of our recent cultural history as romance novels) have been preserved much hasn't and I personally don't feel that everything is worthy of preserving. There are books for example that I wanted to scrub my mind after having read the first page. Not that I am advocating censorship as these books exist because some people want to read them and I am pretty sure if they didn't exist someone would just write more. That again is my personal opinion on specific items and I do not expect anyone to conform to it or even agree.
I have never said or even thought that preserving the books hurts anyone electronically or otherwise. If I did seem to say that I was expressing myself badly.
I feel that the rights of the copyright holder as they stand today (or was that last month?)may be being violated by publishing them even in part on the internet
against their express wishes. The courts have decided otherwise and as we know the courts are always right until they change or even in some cases reverse the decision.
I am not against preserving anything.
I am against arbitrarily taking away rights granted to people in almost all cases although there are many notable exceptions.
Helen