Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Yes, I think this makes sense*. The global impact of the Internet does seem likely to make it fairly pointless to extend the US copyright beyond that in the rest of the world.
You can see a possible example of the effect already with Agatha Christie: the first two books are not public domain anywhere except the US, but still I see editions on Australian sites that are priced so you can be pretty sure the copyright holder isn't getting their share. These are legit' sites, so I can only assume the copyright holder is not spending much effort on these books any more. Maybe they try harder in bigger markets, I don't know.
We might suppose Disney (etc.) would find the US market large enough to try and actively protect their interests, but with so much being hosted offshore it will be next to impossible to stop without asking China for some help in developing national firewalls.
* Except the bit that implies "is property" has anything to do with the "belongs to the artist forever" argument. The two aspects of this are unrelated. Those that believe copyright should stay with with the artist forever will still believe that even if you change the words. A rose by any other name etc.
|
Three Agatha Christie books are public domain in the US. The 2nd Poirot book, Murder on the Links joined US public domain on January 1. Two Agatha Christie books (the UK version of Poirot Investigates and both US and UK versions of The Man in the Brown Suit) are due to join US public domain very soon. I'll note this has not stopped new Agatha Christie books (written by Sophie Hannah with permission by Agatha Christie estate) from being published and the Agatha Christie estate has some years left before books start becoming public domain elsewhere.