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Originally Posted by pwalker8
The public get zero good out of a work that is not publicly available. The value of Huck Finn is that the public at large is able to read the work, not that some guy can write a porno novel based on it. To take an example, if I can't read Doc Smith's Lensman series because it's under copyright and the copyright holder is either unknown or unwilling to make it available, then there is no public good.
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I disagree that books in the public domain are simply turned into "porno novel" by new authors (really?), but I am also concerned about the availability of new books. And that's another benefit of shorter copyrights.
Copyright has a tendency to make books disappear that might otherwise be available if they were available in the public domain. The Atlantic has a good article on the issue
here, but here's a succinct summary:
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By this calculation, the effect of copyright appears extreme. Heald says that the WorldCat research showed, for example, that there were eight times as many books published in the 1980s as in the 1880s, but there are roughly as many titles available on Amazon for the two decades. A book published during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur has a greater chance of being in print today than one published during the time of Reagan.
Copyright advocates have long (and successfully) argued that keeping books copyrighted assures that owners can make a profit off their intellectual property, and that that profit incentive will "assure [the books'] availability and adequate distribution." The evidence, it appears, says otherwise.
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There's a tendency to think that the public domain is just a trough where pigs can rub their disgusting snouts all over other authors' works, and I disagree with that. But leaving that aside, too long copyright still has negative consequences for book availability.