[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by petrucci

Clearly these older works have value. This is corroborated by Ralph Sir Edward's comment that corporations are making money off of the works. There are existing laws pertaining to selling commodities for less than their value. The function of these laws is to protect the value of products. Unfortuantely, they do not extend to intellectual property. If many works that are currently copyright became freely available, then it would reduce the value of all of the works, including new ones and ones that have not yet been created. The Personal History of Vincent Sheean being copyright encourages living authors to produce great works, as they do not have to compete with it being available at no cost.

The overwhelming majority of books cease to have value fairly quickly. Eternal copyright has the same effect as book burning: it makes books disappear. English teachers would love it if people were flocking to public domain classics, but they aren't. Those authors who feel that they their books would be selling if it wasn't for the public domain wouldn't be selling even if the public domain was abolished. Write better books, and maybe people would buy them.

@Quantum Iguana. With regards to the symphony orchestras, their economy has changed based on works being freely available. They cannot justify spending money on a work, when other works cost nothing.

I suppose composers might not be capable of entertaining this idea, but it's

just possible

that their work isn't as good as Beethoven's.

Extending copyright well beyond the authors lifetime offers incentives based on their heirs and based on their philosophy. I am not the beneficiary of any such copyrights. I do feel that it is important that works that are of value are not freely available in a capitalist economy.

Capitalism existed for a very long time without such extensive periods of copyright, thus you cannot appeal to capitalism to justify eternal copyright: eternal copyright just isn't an inherent component of capitalism. And no, extending copyright past life+70 would provide no extra incentive for authors. Would any author decide to write a book because their great-great grandchildren could benefit from the book, but decline to write because their great-great-great grandchildren wouldn't be able to benefit? The answer is "no". Exceedingly few books are still commercially viable 70 years after the author's death.

If eternal copyright is such a great idea, then eternal patent should be a great idea too, except that eternal patent would lead to stagnation.