Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
It's an interesting reason to pay for such content to encourage the current copyright holders to publish more of their back catalogue. I'm a bit skeptical about the extent to which that works, but if it did work, it strikes me as a good reason.
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But if you think about it, that's precisely the rationale for copyright in the first place. We give the creator (and his estate) certain economic rights in the hope that they will be exploited in a manner that encourages the creator to create and publish.
The whole point is economic incentive, not moral right.
I agree with your skepticism, but the reason is that in any particular instance, people have different views about what the best economic procedure will be - and also, because people get bound up in emotional situations that override economics.
So the estate of John Cheever prevents the publication of certain of his short stories they don't think are up to snuff. Why? Well, maybe because if there's "bad Cheever" out there, it diminishes the value of "good Cheever," and overall, lessens the economic take. Or maybe because the estate thinks that John would have burned the bad Cheever if he had a chance.
Personally, given that the bad Cheever has already been published, I don't think that the estate has any moral right to prevent republication, whatever the merit of the stories, and as far as I'm concerned, if the stories get on the darknet, it's perfectly okay to grab them. But the relevant court disagrees with me. There's a pbook, but not an ebook about this -
Uncollecting Cheever by Ann Miller, one of the participants in litigation over the right to republish the stories involved.
Anyway, it appears to be a case where the economic incentive didn't work - exactly as you skepticized. (gotta get that book read...)