Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I'll go a couple of steps past this: copyright is offensive, period! But there are certain benefits that come with it so we've decided as a society to have a copyright system. That doesn't make it nice. Collectively we've agreed to copyright because we think it might be useful. Let's at least keep it short.
There are a lot of abuses of the copyright system that illustrate just how bad it can be for us all. For example, scientific papers, which used to be available to all scientists for review, now have their copyrights turned over to the publisher and can only be shared with subscribers.
A book by Michael Abrash, "The Zen of Assembly Language" quickly became the premier book on the topic and, not long after, it's publisher was bought by a larger publisher who decided to stop publishing computer books. Abrash tried to get the copyright back but they refused so what was generally thought of as the best book ever written at that time on that topic was no longer available.
A favorite author of mine had the same thing happen. Lee Gruenfeld published a number of really good novels in the days just before ebooks became popular. All sold moderately well but Gruenfeld decided to move on to non-fiction. His books have never become available as ebooks. I emailed him at one time and asked him to make them available and he explained that he has no control over that and that his publisher isn't interested. He no longer has the rights so there's nothing he can do.
In short, copyright is nasty stuff. Yes, I agree that it's also useful and that it's benefits outweigh it's ills. Probably. I don't think I'd want to see copyright go away. But let's realize that it's a vile thing that we have to do for a while and let's let it stop as soon as we can.
Barry
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I think we will be able to dispense with copyright when we have a society in which people don't have to sell their labour for a living. When that will be, only God knows.
But I totally agree that it is a necessary evil. And the evil gets bigger as soon as not the author but the publisher holds the copyright, as in your example.
And yet, I have come up with an argument for extending copyright for a few years after the author's death. Say an author dies, having just finished a book for which they were paid a large advance; perhaps the publisher has already spent money to advertise the book as well - it's only fair if the publisher has exclusive rights to the book for a while, isn't it?