Public Domain

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Nobody has put forth the societal good of fiction. I have distinguished fiction from inventions, medicines and the like where there is a societal good.

Nobody needs public domain fiction. There is no limit to the imagination. Can’t copy Superman? Then write about Fantastic man! Or Super Woman. Or Alien baby man. Better yet, come up with more original story and move fiction forward.

You can write Macbeth today....actual Macbeth. But so many stories and movies are actually Macbeth anyway....in ways that would still be ok if the Shakespeare estate had an infinite copyright.

There is no harm to society whatsoever to not be able to plunder the rights of artists. There is clearly a harm to be had for the rights holders.

You keep asserting that no one needs fiction or public domain with no argument to back it up other than your assertion. Yet, both fiction and the PD, i.e. the idea that one may copy existing stories or use those stories as the starting point for new stories, for all of recorded history and most likely has existed for much longer than that. Mankind has always had story tellers, even if it was just the old man by the well telling stories to the village children. Why do you think it still exists if there is no purpose or need?

Tell you what, try reading the two books that I listed. The Boyle book especially goes into why PD and creative commons is a good thing.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by leebase

Nobody has put forth the societal good of fiction.

OK, I'll do so:

• Reading good fiction is enjoyable. Increasing happiness is a societal good. (I'll argue that it's the societal good, if something doesn't either increase happiness or decrease unhappiness, I'm pretty sure it can't be a societal good.)
• Reading is educational. Yes, even fiction. If nothing else, it makes you better at reading and writing. You can improve your command of other languages. You can learn new things about whatever the book is about, and practise critical thinking because you obviously shouldn't believe everything you read.
• Reading fiction helps you learn other ways of seeing the world, gives you lots of examples of things you take for granted that aren't universal, and can improve your empathy.

I think that's enough to start with.

Public domain makes free online libraries like Gutenberg and the MobileRead library possible. They are incredibly valuable because they make books available to poor people.

And as others have mentioned, public domain makes books available which are too marginal to ever be worth keeping in print from a commercial point of view.


I'll also argue that art is made in conversation with other art, and that a shared culture improves both communication and enjoyment. Take Jane Austen, who wrote a handful of books. I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of adaptions and derivative works of her books - films, TV series, and novels. Because of that, Austen is a part of our cultural heritage, and makes jokes like this tweet possible:

Originally Posted by Twitter

oof. Yikes 😬 thanks for letting me know. Im softblocking right now. Sorry i saw a joke tweet he made a while back and followed. didn’t know he attempted to marry your little sister in efforts to access your family fortune, almost ruining her when she was but fifteen years old

(And yes, it's hilarious if you've read/watched enough Austen or Austen-derivates )

[leebase]

Ok...,so we are back to “we want freebies”

[hildea]

Originally Posted by leebase

Ok...,so we are back to “we want freebies”

Did you read my post?

Yes, I want freebies, I want you to have freebies, I want everyone to have freebies. I think free access to literature and other art makes the world better. I also think that artists being able to earn money from their art makes the world better, so time-limited copyright seems a good compromise.

Your turn: Do you really think societal good of a few people maybe earning a bit more money offsets all the societal goods I and others have described in this thread?

To be concrete: Do you think the world would be better if the Gutenberg library and the Mobileread library had to delete almost all their works tomorrow?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by leebase

Premise....copyright is a good thing. Without that premise, nothing else works.

We disagree on the premise.

Copyright is a bad thing.

Stopping people making their own copies of something is a bad thing.

But we accept that copyright is the least bad way to reward authors for their creations.

Since copyright is not a good thing, we want as little of it as possible.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by hildea

Did you read my post?

Yes, I want freebies, I want you to have freebies, I want everyone to have freebies. I think free access to literature and other art makes the world better. I also think that artists being able to earn money from their art makes the world better, so time-limited copyright seems a good compromise.

Your turn: Do you really think societal good of a few people maybe earning a bit more money offsets all the societal goods I and others have described in this thread?

To be concrete: Do you think the world would be better if the Gutenberg library and the Mobileread library had to delete almost all their works tomorrow?

Communication achieved. The rest is repetition (I know, it's been that way for awhile). I think art that is actually accessible to the public comes from economics....just like every other good and service. I think the work of artists, authors and composers is no different from laborers and craftsmen and farmers.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by leebase

Communication achieved.

Would you mind communicating a bit more? I'd like to understand your views better.

I think the work of artists, authors and composers is no different from laborers and craftsmen and farmers.

In theory I'll agree with you on that. In practice, it becomes a lot more tricky, though.

I'd like you to clarify one thing: If your ideal copyright laws were implemented, the Gutenberg and Mobileread libraries would have to delete almost all their works. Would you see that at something good in itself, or something regrettable that would nevertheless be worth it for the advantages you see?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by leebase

I think the work of artists, authors and composers is no different from laborers and craftsmen and farmers.

Then shouldn't you be pushing to help out the farmers?

After all they have it far worse than writers. If they create a bushel of corn and sell it then it is gone. They and there descendents can't keep selling the same bushel over and over again forever. A travesty!

[leebase]

Originally Posted by hildea

Would you mind communicating a bit more? I'd like to understand your views better.

In theory I'll agree with you on that. In practice, it becomes a lot more tricky, though.

I'd like you to clarify one thing: If your ideal copyright laws were implemented, the Gutenberg and Mobileread libraries would have to delete almost all their works. Would you see that at something good in itself, or something regrettable that would nevertheless be worth it for the advantages you see?

All the works, in my world, would still be available. Either via public domain due to neglect, or as commercial books.

I think libraries are fine for "books for the poor". I don't think very many of the truly poor are able to benefit from project Gutenberg.

Consider a farm. You farm every year and sell the produce/live stock. But the farm continues to exist. There isn't a time where we just say "ok, farmer, your land is now in the public domain for anyone to farm and take the proceeds for themselves".

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by leebase

I think libraries are fine for "books for the poor". I don't think very many of the truly poor are able to benefit from project Gutenberg.

I think you're wrong here. Gutenburg books are often "cleaned up" and provided for download by others (like ManyBooks). Unless by "truly poor" you mean those who can't afford a used $20 eReader.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by leebase

All the works, in my world, would still be available. Either via public domain due to neglect, or as commercial books.

I think libraries are fine for "books for the poor". I don't think very many of the truly poor are able to benefit from project Gutenberg.

Consider a farm. You farm every year and sell the produce/live stock. But the farm continues to exist. There isn't a time where we just say "ok, farmer, your land is now in the public domain for anyone to farm and take the proceeds for themselves".

...as long as the farmer pays the taxes on the land, and buys seed and feed to keep producing. Once they stop paying taxes on the land, the government moves in and forecloses on it.

What do authors (or their heirs) need to do in order to keep the money rolling in for the books that they produced? I guess you could say that they need to promote, but truly, most author's heirs that are still making money off of their ancestor's books do little or nothing to promote the books.

Shari

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by leebase

Consider a farm. You farm every year and sell the produce/live stock. But the farm continues to exist. There isn't a time where we just say "ok, farmer, your land is now in the public domain for anyone to farm and take the proceeds for themselves".

Except when the farmer can't pay taxes and then the state takes it away. We don't currently charge a copyright renewal fee, but if we did, almost everything would eventually end up in the public domain because it wasn't commercially viable.

[Raphi'Elohim]

This may seem weird and outre but I am going to make the biological argument for sake of diversity of arguments here and maybe make the discussion not so repetitive.

Ok, so let us take John Paul Sartre's books on philosophy or maybe Albert Camus' books. They are not available on project Gutenberg but Arthur Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein are. Why ? Probably because of what Pwalker8 mentioned.

John Paul Sartre's book "No Exit" was published in 1944. Let us say his relatives own the intellectual property to the book and are making money off it.

A person shares 3.13%, on average, genetically or DNA-wise with their second cousins. So the relatives profiting off the book currently would be like strangers or almost strangers genetically to Sartre so it makes no logical sense scientifically as we share like 99% of our DNA with bonobo chimps or monkeys.

Also, maybe relatives are not profiting but actual complete strangers in a publishing house/company.

I might also add I read all of Schopenhauer's works available on Gutenberg and I noticed that last one I read only had 144 downloads. Do you really think "No Exit" would have a ton of downloads ?

So no one would be making a lot of money off it, anyway.

It seems to me people might be making a mountain out of a molehill here or maybe I am just doing a weird analysis that is also limited myopically in scope.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

Ok, so let us take John Paul Sartre's books on philosophy or maybe Albert Camus' books. They are not available on project Gutenberg but Arthur Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein are. Why ? Probably because of what Pwalker8 mentioned.

John Paul Sartre's book "No Exit" was published in 1944. Let us say his relatives own the intellectual property to the book and are making money off it.

A person shares 3.13%, on average, genetically or DNA-wise with their second cousins. So the relatives profiting off the book currently would be like strangers or almost strangers genetically to Sartre so it makes no logical sense scientifically as we share like 99% of our DNA with bonobo chimps or monkeys.

Also, maybe relatives are not profiting but actual complete strangers in a publishing house/company.

I might also add I read all of Schopenhauer's works available on Gutenberg and I noticed that last one I read only had 144 downloads. Do you really think "No Exit" would have a ton of downloads ?

So no one would be making a lot of money off it, anyway.

It seems to me people might be making a mountain out of a molehill here or maybe I am just doing a weird analysis that is also limited myopically in scope.

Schopenhauer died in 1860, so everything he wrote is PD, and assuming his works had all been translated by 1922, have English translations at PG, too. Wittgenstein's one non-posthumous work was published in 1921, so it's PD in US and life+50 countries (2022 pretty much everywhere), although it looks like either no English translation occurred in 1923, or nobody's provided it to PG yet. Camus wrote all of his works in 1935 or later, so they won't be showing up at PG until the 2040s or later, although he's PD in Canada and other life+50 countries now, and in 2031 pretty much elsewhere. Sartre started writing in the late 1930s and died in 1980, so his works will be the last of these 4 to reach PD status, in the 2040s and later (assuming Canada capitulates and goes to life+70 too).

It's hard to say why there are not many downloads of Schopenhauer from PG. Perhaps he's not taught in English speaking colleges and universities very often, or when he is, the professors require specific translations which are not PD.

Even though it's not PD, Internet Archive has a English translation of "No Exit", and it's had about 147 thousand downloads since it was uploaded in 2011. Perhaps it's more popular because it's taught in English-speaking schools? Sartre was an only child, and didn't have any kids, he had been in a long term relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. His literary estate went to her and after her death went to her adopted daughter, so she's probably missing out on at least $150,000, assuming that US royalties would run about $1 per copy. Should you care whether an unrelated person who I suspect got adopted by his partner shortly before or after his death (although he probably knew her for 20 years) is getting income from it 40 years after his death? My guess is that most of those 147k people don't care, even if leebase does. For the record, I'm probably one of the 147k downloads because I was searching for "No Exit" on Google, saw it was on IA, and was expecting the link to go to the overview showing the metadata (like download count) instead of the actual text. I read the first paragraph. I don't care.

[Raphi'Elohim]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Schopenhauer died in 1860, so everything he wrote is PD, and assuming his works had all been translated by 1922, have English translations at PG, too. Wittgenstein's one non-posthumous work was published in 1921, so it's PD in US and life+50 countries (2022 pretty much everywhere), although it looks like either no English translation occurred in 1923, or nobody's provided it to PG yet. Camus wrote all of his works in 1935 or later, so they won't be showing up at PG until the 2040s or later, although he's PD in Canada and other life+50 countries now, and in 2031 pretty much elsewhere. Sartre started writing in the late 1930s and died in 1980, so his works will be the last of these 4 to reach PD status, in the 2040s and later (assuming Canada capitulates and goes to life+70 too).

It's hard to say why there are not many downloads of Schopenhauer from PG. Perhaps he's not taught in English speaking colleges and universities very often, or when he is, the professors require specific translations which are not intellectual property.

Even though it's not PD, Internet Archive has a English translation of "No Exit", and it's had about 147 thousand downloads since it was uploaded in 2011. Perhaps it's more popular because it's taught in English-speaking schools? Sartre was an only child, and didn't have any kids, he had been in a long term relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. His literary estate went to her and after her death went to her adopted daughter, so she's probably missing out on at least $150,000, assuming that US royalties would run about $1 per copy. Should you care whether an unrelated person who I suspect got adopted by his partner shortly before or after his death (although he probably knew her for 20 years) is getting income from it 40 years after his death? My guess is that most of those 147k people don't care, even if leebase does. For the record, I'm probably one of the 147k downloads because I was searching for "No Exit" on Google, saw it was on IA, and was expecting the link to go to the overview showing the metadata (like download count) instead of the actual text. I read the first paragraph. I don't care.

Thanks for information. So people not related to Sartre would theoretically get the profits if "No Exit" if it was not in the internet archive. That is not a good argument for PD having a seemingly arbitrary time limit for all works generally.

Anyway, about Schopenhauer. Most people don't understand the path he took they understand Hegel more. Prussia was the first nation state to implement compulsary public education with the motive of creating sheeple that all thought alike on important issues and topics in the interest of the rulers of the state. Hegel was the head of this and Schopenhauer was his arch enemy. Schopenhauer said this of Hegel :

"Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of an whole generation."
- The World as Will and Idea, vol. 2 (1844)

"But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity. "
- The World as Will and Idea, vol. 2 (1844)


Anyway, American universities are dominated by liberals and socialists hate Schopenhauer so he is not taught in America. Americans are fond of quoting Jefferson but we live in Hamilton's country and I would say we live in a Hegelian-Hamiltonian Federalist Oligarchy Tyranny.