Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Of course they wouldn't. They want copyright to last forever. They don't want the public--which includes their competitors--to have the right to make new works based on the old ones, or to freely share the ones that already exist.
What they consider a good deal is irrelevant; the purpose of copyright isn't "to allow creators & investors to make as much money as possible off a given work."
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Thats partly true.
More prescient however, is that a more robust public domain would compete with newly published material. If the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's books were already in the public domain — todays authors would not get much of a look in. For example, nobody writes better country-house mysteries than Agatha Christie, nobody writes comedy of manners better than P. G. Wodehouse, and nobody writes crime like Dashiell Hammett.
Its no accident that the most famous, most read and (arguably) best loved fictional detective is the Public Domain's own Sherlock Holmes. And from the public domain, countless move adaptations, TV series and book pastiches have kept 'The Cannon' in print ever since its first publication.
Other genres have their own equivalents.
The monopoly cartels extend the length of existing copyright simply because they can't compete with the public domain. They have no interest in publishing decade old books (with a few notable exceptions), they have no interest in exploiting their old catalogues — but under no circumstances can they allow free access to them either.
Their 'business model' is that of a dog in a manger. I don't want it but you cant have it.