Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaurnim
This has already been discussed more than 100 years ago, when copyright was put into place (in England I think).
I can't find the link, I'm sure somebody else on the forum will. If not, I'll have a more thorough look when I'm back at home.
It was said that copyright is the "least objectionable" way of paying authors for their works, as opposed to public or private funding, where the state's or the sponsor's opinions influence the authors they choose and the amount of money they give them.
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When copyright was put into place, copyright pretty much only protected the incomes of authors (and the publishing houses they chose to work with) because anyone wanting to pirate their works would have to pay for the media to distribute the works on. Which means that copyright outlawing piracy didn't hurt the media consuming public much at all, since pirates would be charging close to the price of the original author.
Modern circumstances are different - copyright laws *do* hurt the media consuming public, since there is little to no distribution cost. Modern pirates charge nothing at all.
Not to say I'm wholeheartedly against copyright as a means to protect authors (certainly *something* needs to keep authors producing new books), but saying "the issue was decided a hundred years ago" fails to observe that the facts on the ground are different now.