Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
It seems kind of silly to try to determine if any particular book is important to society. Everyone has a different opinion about any particular book. There is no answer to that. It's a meaningless question.
The question which can be answered is whether there are orphaned books that have value to society and that answer is obviously yes. And since that's the case there's a problem with orphaned books.
Here's a link to a TED talk on youtube by Nina Paley that talks about this and a lot more involving copyright. I'm not suggesting that her answer is the way we should go. It's not. But this is a sincere artist dealing with a serious problem in the best way that she can and then trying to extract from the situation a more general principle. I may not agree with her but I certainly have a lot of respect for what she's done and how she's expressed herself.
The talk is titled "Copyright is Brain Damage". It's very much worth seeing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc
Barry |
My thinking is if the book is that darned great, someone over the years would have found a way to get them to the masses, be it published last year, last decade, last century or a millennium ago.
I can of several that were that important. The Mythologies, the Bible/Koran/other religions texts, Shakespeare, etc.
I am pretty sure people that lived in those times could think of others they thought should be preserved.