Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
#2? "Another flaw is that there are books out there right now that are orphaned, and nobody knows who has the rights. Because of the way that copyright is structured in the US, the copyright for some of these books won't be available until years after anyone who is interested in the books is dead."
How does that nail your argument? Because of the "years after anyone who is interested in the books is dead." part? The point is that people won't be interested in the books because they won't know about them, and probably couldn't get a copy even if they did.
Again...If Shakespeare's works had been written now, (or even 75 years ago) they would probably be forgotten, since his last heir died about 50 years after Shakespeare himself did, and the works would still be in copyright with no way to distribute or perform them.
Shari
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That's the issue. There are so many works in history that we only know about because they were mentioned in passing, or were quoted by someone else. This is because through much of history, the total number of copies of a book might range up into the hundreds if that.
If you look at modern books, then pre eBook, unless you were a very successful author, once the initial run was done, then the only place the book can be found is in a used book store. To a certain extent, success tends to be a matter of luck. One of my favorite authors from the 80's was Brian Daley. He never really hit it big, but I think that was more because he got lost in the shuffle than anything else. If it wasn't for the fact that his widow released his books as ebooks, I certainly wouldn't be able to replace the books that I have of his since the books have been out of print in paper for quite some time.