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Originally Posted by leebase
I accept that Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austin works are good examples as counter arguments to my hyperbolic “no one will invest in properties they can’t own”. Of course...one needn’t look past Disney for such examples.
I’d say this in reply....Disney and the folks behind the Holmes shows and movies were willing to invest in pre-existing stories...because they knew their own works would be protected by ownership and the value of the existing works was worth exploiting even though others can equally exploit those same works.
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Jane Austen only really became popular with the masses after copyright for them expired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recept...of_Jane_Austen The 1880s and 1890s were full of cheap editions that only could have been printed because the initial copyright for the novels had expired, and Jane Austen has been in the popular consciousness ever since. There's a pretty good recent book about this by Janine Barchas called
The Lost Books of Jane Austen https://lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu...g-jane-austen/
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Where do you think Austen might be in history had her novels not sold for such affordable prices?
I tend to rely on facts and admit that even friendly hypotheticals make me nervous. All I can observe with confidence is that the cheapness of reprintings in the nineteenth century helped to promote and lock in the astonishing literary fame Austen now enjoys. However, and just between friends, might Austen have risen to the top of today’s literary charts if her stories had remained accessible only as rarified and expensive editions — such as was the case in her own lifetime? My gut says “no.”
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In many cases, books tend to get more reprints when they're public domain, for many reasons, and publishers seem to be doing just fine with reprints of public domain material. Limited copyright serves the purpose of giving creatives a good limited monopoly over their works, and to promote the good of our culture, copyrights expire so others can reuse, remix or adapt to their hearts content.