[QuantumIguana]

The ease of copying is very relevant to the term of the copyright. If valuable works, regardless of age, are freely available, then they compete economically with newly created works. Given that we can copy works at very little cost, works in the public domain are essentially free. It is very difficult to compete with free products.

No, it isn't. It is not the purpose of copyright to protect current authors from having to compete with public domain works. The purpose of copyright is to encourage people to create, and thus they are given a limited government-granted monopoly in exchange for the work entering the public domain at some time.

The printing press did make copyright relevant because it was much easier to copy with the printing press than it was by hand. Copyright has already increased dramatically, the ease of copying doesn't imply that copyright needs to be further extended. The overwhelming majority of works have faded into obscurity long before life+70 years have passed.

Eternal copyright would undermine the intent of copyright. The public domain is the culture. Had copyright been eternal, we couldn't have had Romeo and Juliet, because it was based on an earlier work. Walt Disney made a fortune mining the public domain. If the copyright period had been as long in his day as it is now, he wouldn't have been able to make these movies, or at least would need someone else's permission. The Brother's Grimm mined the public domain for their stories. Should we have been deprived of them?

I claim that it is important that works that have value are copyright. Thus, once they have been recognized as valuable they should be copyright. Given that it can take time to recognize the value of such works, I believe that there should be a minimum duration of copyright.

You're still going with that? We do in fact have a minimum duration of copyright, in fact considerably more than minimal: Life plus 70 years! Even if the author dies immediately after publishing, that's book will be under copyright for 70 years. That is clearly more than enough time for the book to be discovered. If the author lived for a longer period of time after writing the book, it stays under copyright for an even longer time.

But making copyright eternal means that the book can't be discovered. There are vaults full of decaying movies. They are under copyright, but no one knows who owns the copyright. With eternal copyright, the same thing would happen with books, they would be stuck in limbo. You couldn't discover them and publish them because they would be under copyright and no one would know who held the rights.

It is true. See my comments above on Peter and the Wolf. It is a fact that people read books that are in the public domain. People also have a limited amount of time to read. Every minute that is spent reading a public domain book, is one that is not spent reading a book that is not in the public domain. It also represents money that is not spent on a newly created book. I am not arguing that no newly created works will be sold, or that people will only read public domain works. I am arguing that the public domain works compete for the time and money of the consumer, and that some consumers choose public domain works over newly created ones.

Why do so few people watch old public domain movies? Why do so few people listen to old public domain music? And see my comments that Beethoven might just be a little bit better than someone compsing today. Throwing books into the bonfire by making copyright eternal isn't going going to increase sales of new books. If an author's books aren't selling, it's probably because he isn't writing very good books. Some people read public domain classics, yes, but it isn't a zero-sum game. Taking away the public domain is just going to result in less books being read. If we took away Beethoven, people wouldn't turn to newer composers, classical music would just become weaker.

If someone is reading Austen, Dickens or Melville, and these are taken away, they aren't going to pick up the books of some struggling author: that author can't compete with the classics. But people also have a finite amount of money to spend on books. If they read a free book, that means they have more money to spend on books that are not free.