Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Copyright law absolutely includes the right not to publish. That's what guarantees you the right to keep your private diary private, for example. The right not to publish is a fundamental part of copyright law. It's about you, as the author, deciding who has the right to make copies of your work. If your decision is "nobody", that's absolutely your right.
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I think that's a different issue. Once published books shouldn't be allowed to be withheld. The right to keep things private and not publish them is a very different thing.
Once a book is published it becomes part of our culture and withholding it is withholding parts of who we are. It's not really the same thing as re-writing history but I think the same arguments might apply to both.
Short copyright terms are a partial solution to this but they're not likely to happen. Better would be a provision allowing copyright to expire after something is no longer available for a certain period. That would allow copyrights periods to be long, safeguarding Mickey Mouse, and still give us access to our culture.
Copyright is about promoting creativity and, even though the constitution doesn't explicitly say so, about letting authors make money, which is pretty much the same thing. That's a good thing. Authors need that and readers need it. Readers also need to be able to go back and read the stuff they read before. In the days where books were all on paper there was no way to make that happen. In the days of ebooks there are good and practical solutions available should we choose to implement them.
Barry