Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I'm not saying people shouldn't say new things. Of course we want new ideas and new books. But we can be happy with a lot fewer than today.
I just googled to find out how many new books there were in 2018 and I found two numbers, one for self published books, which is said to be over a million, although it doesn't say if that's worldwide or in the USA, and another that says 304,912 distinct books were published in the USA. I don't know if that includes self-published books. So the numbers are iffy but close enough to re-enforce my point that we can do with fewer books.
If we were to do away with copyright that wouldn't mean no more books. It might mean a lot fewer books but those would be from the authors who most love to write and I don't really see that as a bad thing.
I'm not sure I'm really advocating that we end copyright. Books are important to me and that would be a risky move with no more information than I have. But I think it's worth some discussion.
As for the next Harry Potter, or substitute your favorite blockbuster, that's not really something I care about. How many people other than publishers and authors do care about it? The Harry Potter fans have their books and they don't really have any reason to think they wouldn't have them if there were no copyrights. Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they would. That's not really part of this.
Barry
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Well, I would go back through history and see how authors earned their money. Most earned their money either through performances (plays and the like) or were what I would call academic writers, i.e. people who were either rich enough or had some sort of job that gave them leisure to write. Even up until the 60's or so, most professional fictional writers made their money writing for newspapers or magazines rather than writing books. Even the great novelists of the 1800's had those novels serialized in magazines or papers. Short stories were much more common than novels.
Also consider what is happening in the music industry as more and more people get their music from streaming services than from buying records or albums. Big name acts now make their money from touring rather than from album sells. Of course, smaller name acts have always toured since their album sells were never that big. You have to have multiple streams of income to make ends meet in that business.
I would also say to look at the US market prior to the mid 70's. At that time, the US didn't recognize copyright outside the US unless the work was registered for copyright in the US. There was the famous situation with LOTR and the unauthorized Ace version in the US.
While I do think that copyright should be greatly reduced and that the scope of derivative works should definitely be decreased, I think it's ill advised to throw the baby out with the bath water. Consider what problem you are trying to solve by getting rid of copyright and what problem was being addressed by copyright in the first place.
As far as actually doing away with copyright in the US, it would take an amendment to the constitution and that isn't going to happen.