Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
I don't understand what you are saying here at all.
Do publishers have some innate right when they own the copyright that authors who own the copyright do not have?
Helen
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I wasn't talking about the case when the publisher owns the copyright, but publishers do have an innate characteristic as they are the ones who make copies.
Copyright law gives temporary monopoly to the author but the author doesn't make copies, so publishers end up enjoying the temporary monopoly which is why I say that copyright benefits the publishers.
When copyright is extended it means that there are more works that publishers can have monopoly over, so the value of the work (i.e. how much a publisher is willing to pay the author) decreases so this hurts authors. This isn't immediately apparent if you think of it from the point of view of older works. Their authors had their works valued higher as copyright was shorter and there was less competition, and now simply get extra time to gather benefits. But the creation of new works will suffer.