Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
Ah but which libraries have which books? And which books are on acid pree paper and which aren't? And how many copies ae there on average of a given book? With digital copies you don't have to worry about the book vanishing if the paper crumbles, gets waterlogged, or burns. There have been similar problems with other media. OTR (Old Time Radio) for example. Most of the extant 'copies' of OTR programs come from people recording a copy while listening to the original broadcast of the show. Yet Conde Nast claims it owns many of them despite not having existed when they were broadcast and despite their existence today only being possible because private citizens preserved the shows themselves.
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This is something that worries me. There are books that are exceedingly rare. The kind where, if you search hard, you might find only one or two copies available for sale if you are lucky. And some books, ZERO.
Every year, rare books get destroyed by assorted natural disasters. Every year, rare books get tossed in the trash by someone disposing of an estate who needs to get it done soonest and thinks a ratty old book can't be worth anything.
How many copies will be left by the time they are in the public domain? Who will remember these books and make an effort to find and publish them then?
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