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A book is nothing more than a string of words. Words are in the public domain, obviously. Therefore any combination of them, it stands to reason, is in the public domain. Public domain meaning, at least in this case, all of us own it.
Why do you "own" a book just because you wrote it? The simple reason is that what you own, according to the Constitution, is the right to control it's distribution for a limited time. You don't own combinations of words.
Copyright is set up because we all, or at least most of us, recognize that creators need a head start to get their stuff going. They need it and they deserve it and we need to allow them to have it. We need it as much as they do because we need to encourage people to be creative.
Even the ownership of your computer or car or home or the clothes your wearing can be questioned legitimately. You own it because we all agree that you own it. There's nothing in nature that says you own it.
Intel tried, unsuccessfully, thank the courts, to trademark the letter I. If they'd done so the Ipad would have become the Pad. We'd have to pay our blls. Spell checkers would go mad. There would be havoc.
Nobody can own a letter. Nobody can own a word. Nobody can own any combination of two words or 10 words or 100,000 words. But, for the benefit of us all we do give people who put together combinations of words the right to control their distribution for a limited time. Personally I'm glad we do, even though lobbyists have pushed Congress to extend that time to ridiculous lengths. Still, Congress has done so so there we are.
I do like the idea of having to register a copyright annually. I'm not sure why even a nominal fee should be attached although I don't see any real problem with that. The simple fact of annual registration of copyright seems an adequate solution. Don't register it this year and it expires. I like that idea.
Even better would be shorter copyright terms but I realize, sadly, that isn't likely.
Calling copyright ownership lends weight to the lobbyists arguments for longer terms. I find that pretty scary.
The original copyright term in the USA was 14 years, which could be extended once by registering it again. Personally I'd cut that in half but it's not really unreasonably long. It let's far more than 99% of all books go out of print before they become public domain.
Barry
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