Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
Nobody has put forth the societal good of fiction.
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OK, I'll do so:
- Reading good fiction is enjoyable. Increasing happiness is a societal good. (I'll argue that it's the societal good, if something doesn't either increase happiness or decrease unhappiness, I'm pretty sure it can't be a societal good.)
- Reading is educational. Yes, even fiction. If nothing else, it makes you better at reading and writing. You can improve your command of other languages. You can learn new things about whatever the book is about, and practise critical thinking because you obviously shouldn't believe everything you read.
- Reading fiction helps you learn other ways of seeing the world, gives you lots of examples of things you take for granted that aren't universal, and can improve your empathy.
I think that's enough to start with.
Public domain makes free online libraries like Gutenberg and the MobileRead library possible. They are incredibly valuable because they make books available to poor people.
And as others have mentioned, public domain makes books available which are too marginal to ever be worth keeping in print from a commercial point of view.
I'll also argue that art is made in conversation with other art, and that a shared culture improves both communication and enjoyment. Take Jane Austen, who wrote a handful of books. I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of adaptions and derivative works of her books - films, TV series, and novels. Because of that, Austen is a part of our cultural heritage, and makes jokes like
this tweet possible:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Twitter
oof. Yikes 😬 thanks for letting me know. Im softblocking right now. Sorry i saw a joke tweet he made a while back and followed. didn’t know he attempted to marry your little sister in efforts to access your family fortune, almost ruining her when she was but fifteen years old
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(And yes, it's hilarious if you've read/watched enough Austen or Austen-derivates
)