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've still got a copy of the Abrash book. It was a classic of it's time, but like most computer books it had a very limited shelf life. His book on computer graphics was very good as well.
I would point out that in both cases, the issue isn't copyright, it is the contract that the writer signed with the publisher. Standard advice is to make sure that there is a clause in the contract that the rights revert back to you, the author, under certain circumstances, such as the yearly sales drop below a certain figure.