[hildea]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

Now I'd like everyone involved to get appropriate payment and due credit, but I think more derivative works and more re-workings would be a good thing.

Interesting thoughts! I think noncommercial transformative *) works like fanfiction should be legal, and it seems they probably are, but I'm unsure what to think about commercial transformative works. My gut feeling says that we should treat this differently based on whether the IP is held by an individual creator or a company, but I haven't really examined that view.

What kind of changes in the law would you like to see?

*) I'm not completely clear about where the line is drawn between "transformative" and "derivative" works. In this thread I think we've mostly used "derivative" to mean both.

Originally Posted by leebase

What you won’t have at all is investment. No one can afford to invest in something that has no ownership.

I agree with your other points in that post, but this part is simply not true. A couple of really obivous counter examples: Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austen's works.

Originally Posted by barryem

I didn't comment on your idea about the quality declining due to a lack of professional services such as editing. I'm not a writer and I'm not sure how important that is. I do know that authors say it's important but I wonder if we didn't have good literature before we had good editors. And how much do editors make a book a team effort instead of simply the work of the author. I'm not sure about any of this so I didn't comment. I do think if it becomes a problem authors will find ways to deal with it.

I'm not an author either, but I like reading about writing. Courtney Milan (author) has a breakdown of different kinds of editing, and KJ Charles (both author and editor) writes craft advice, like this one on working with an editor (with a thought-provoking example of the difference between em-dash and ellipsis!)

I'm sure good editing makes a noticeable difference, even for experienced authors. Of course authors will deal with it, but the obvious way to deal with it for those who aren't rich is simply to do without. In other words, reduce the quality of the published books.

I doubt seriously there would be NO new books. There would probably be fewer but those who were writing would be doing so because they want to, not because they hope to get rich.

What about the many, many authors who write not because they hope to get rich but because it's their preferred way of making a living? Many of these love writing, do it really well, and create books which readers enjoy and which sometimes receive literary awards. What advantage do you see in putting these out of a job, thus dramatically reducing the number of books they are able to write and the time and money they are able to put into improving their manuscripts?

Maybe we're having a quantity vs quality discussion.

I'm confused: How will removing copyright improve quality? Is there anything in the current copyright regime that you think prevents people who love writing from doing so? This doesn't sound like quality vs quantity, it's (more quality and more quantity) vs (less quality and less quantity) which should make it an easy choice.