Why public domain

[BadBilly]

Copyright as it exists now seems more intended to protect corporate profits. That is why we've seen corporations like Disney campaigning for continued extensions.

The current system of life+70 in most jurisdictions seems unreasonable. Something like life+25 would ensure that even if a creator died right after producing a work, his/her family could benefit from it until any children are grown. Then it would enter public domain so that others may use it as part of our cultural heritage. That seems it would balance creator interest and society's.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Odd, based on the books published, I thought the the big threat is the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse.

Heh, don't diss the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for the alienation inherent in our modern society
Anyway, the last zombie apocalypse novel series I read started with unethical medical research, and featured a presidental election with various shenenigans, as well as corruption and power grab in CDC.

Originally Posted by barryem

The vast majority of people who spent a significant amount of time writing a book never made a dime from it.

Are you sure that's still true today? I'm not talking about earning huge amounts of money like Rowling, but making a bit extra, maybe not enough to quit your day job, but enough to help with bills and justify spending a lot of time on.

I'd assume most of those 304,912 or a million books you mentioned earned some money for the author.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by hildea

...

I'd assume most of those 304,912 or a million books you mentioned earned some money for the author.

I wouldn't bet on that. One of my friends self published a book a few years ago. I doubt he sold enough copies to cover the expense of hiring an editor and cover art, much less the hours he spent writing the book.

Certainly it's likely that most books published by the big publishing firms that give advances and cover the expenses of publishing a book earn the author some money, though likely not that much. It goes back to most books published by the big publishers only sell 10,000 or less copies. I would guess that most self published books sell a whole lot less than that. Successful authors are fairly rare.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by barryem

I'm not saying people shouldn't say new things. Of course we want new ideas and new books. But we can be happy with a lot fewer than today.

I just googled to find out how many new books there were in 2018 and I found two numbers, one for self published books, which is said to be over a million, although it doesn't say if that's worldwide or in the USA, and another that says 304,912 distinct books were published in the USA. I don't know if that includes self-published books. So the numbers are iffy but close enough to re-enforce my point that we can do with fewer books.

If we were to do away with copyright that wouldn't mean no more books. It might mean a lot fewer books but those would be from the authors who most love to write and I don't really see that as a bad thing.

I'm not sure I'm really advocating that we end copyright. Books are important to me and that would be a risky move with no more information than I have. But I think it's worth some discussion.

As for the next Harry Potter, or substitute your favorite blockbuster, that's not really something I care about. How many people other than publishers and authors do care about it? The Harry Potter fans have their books and they don't really have any reason to think they wouldn't have them if there were no copyrights. Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they would. That's not really part of this.


Barry

Well, I would go back through history and see how authors earned their money. Most earned their money either through performances (plays and the like) or were what I would call academic writers, i.e. people who were either rich enough or had some sort of job that gave them leisure to write. Even up until the 60's or so, most professional fictional writers made their money writing for newspapers or magazines rather than writing books. Even the great novelists of the 1800's had those novels serialized in magazines or papers. Short stories were much more common than novels.

Also consider what is happening in the music industry as more and more people get their music from streaming services than from buying records or albums. Big name acts now make their money from touring rather than from album sells. Of course, smaller name acts have always toured since their album sells were never that big. You have to have multiple streams of income to make ends meet in that business.

I would also say to look at the US market prior to the mid 70's. At that time, the US didn't recognize copyright outside the US unless the work was registered for copyright in the US. There was the famous situation with LOTR and the unauthorized Ace version in the US.

While I do think that copyright should be greatly reduced and that the scope of derivative works should definitely be decreased, I think it's ill advised to throw the baby out with the bath water. Consider what problem you are trying to solve by getting rid of copyright and what problem was being addressed by copyright in the first place.

As far as actually doing away with copyright in the US, it would take an amendment to the constitution and that isn't going to happen.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by BadBilly

At first glance, copyright law and royalties may look like some kind of lazy thievery to an hourly-wage worker. Let's say you're a Walmart greeter. You have to stand at the front of the store and say "Welcome to Walmart, here is a cart" for hours every day. Oh, the author's life looks like a sweet scam because they get paid for every copy of the book sold.

Wal Mart did away with greeters years ago to save $3,000,000.00 a year. There costs associated with shoplifting and employee theft then rose by more than 10 times that amount.
The greeters were originally hired as a way to deter shoplifting and employee theft without intimidation. Now they have replaced them with a combination of employees and security guards.
I was in a Wal Mart yesterday and thought I was in Sam's because they were scanning customer's receipts and checking their purchases.
Now your signed membership contract with Sam's Club states that you agree to allowing them to do this. The last time I checked there isn't a signed agreement to allow Wal Mart to do this. It also comes across that they consider their customers thieves. I would not be surprised if some lawyer brought a class action suit against them for this.
Apache

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Apache

Wal Mart did away with greeters years ago to save $3,000,000.00 a year. There costs associated with shoplifting and employee theft then rose by more than 10 times that amount.
The greeters were originally hired as a way to deter shoplifting and employee theft without intimidation. Now they have replaced them with a combination of employees and security guards.
I was in a Wal Mart yesterday and thought I was in Sam's because they were scanning customer's receipts and checking their purchases.
Now your signed membership contract with Sam's Club states that you agree to allowing them to do this. The last time I checked there isn't a signed agreement to allow Wal Mart to do this. It also comes across that they consider their customers thieves. I would not be surprised if some lawyer brought a class action suit against them for this.
Apache

Computer and electronic stores have been doing this for years. Yea, they do think their customers are thieves. For a while, Apple did the opposite of this, they would let you pick up an item off the shelf, pay for it via your Apple shopping app and just walk out with it, not having to show anyone anything. Don't know if they still do that or not. I really felt weird the first time I tried it.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Computer and electronic stores have been doing this for years. Yea, they do think their customers are thieves. For a while, Apple did the opposite of this, they would let you pick up an item off the shelf, pay for it via your Apple shopping app and just walk out with it, not having to show anyone anything. Don't know if they still do that or not. I really felt weird the first time I tried it.

They still did this when I got my iPhone last year

[barryem]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

As far as actually doing away with copyright in the US, it would take an amendment to the constitution and that isn't going to happen.

It wouldn't take an amendment. The Constitution authorizes Congress to create copyright laws and patents. It doesn't mandate them.

And I'm not really advocating doing away with copyright as much as I'm wondering whether we should. I think it's worth discussing the ins and outs of it. Yes it would be unfair to some people but so is the present system. We might want to look at which is more unfair and to how many people.

Barry

[barryem]

Originally Posted by hildea

HAre you sure that's still true today? I'm not talking about earning huge amounts of money like Rowling, but making a bit extra, maybe not enough to quit your day job, but enough to help with bills and justify spending a lot of time on.

I'm not sure most people who write books make no money from them but that's always been the conventional wisdom. I suspect it's always been true and it probably is still true but I can't really say I know it's true.

We all have heard stories about people who send books to publishers and they're rejected. Most authors, in interviews, talk about how many times they were rejected before their first book was accepted. Those are the ones who kept going and were eventually published. How many gave up or never got published no matter how much they tried.

I don't really have answers. I just think these are worthwhile questions.

Barry

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by barryem

It wouldn't take an amendment. The Constitution authorizes Congress to create copyright laws and patents. It doesn't mandate them.

And I'm not really advocating doing away with copyright as much as I'm wondering whether we should. I think it's worth discussing the ins and outs of it. Yes it would be unfair to some people but so is the present system. We might want to look at which is more unfair and to how many people.

Barry

I've never been terribly fond of unlikely thought experiments. Dropping copyright isn't going to happen for a lot of reasons. Heck, changing copyright law so that the US is no longer part of the Berne convention isn't going to happen. There is too much money involved. The best we can hope for is a holding action to keep copyright terms from being extended yet again.

As I said before, before you change things, you need to understand why they are the way they are. I would also say, go take a look at Project Gutenberg, poke around and think about if this is really what you want with regards to novels in the future. As noble as the venture is, it's a pretty rudimentary ebook store. That's what happens when no one has any incentive to invest in something.

I suspect that the consequences for your proposal would be much more negative than you think. I also think that your unspoken assumption, that everything worth reading has already been written, is very fairly obviously not true.

[hildea]

barryem, pwalker8: After thinking about it a bit more I agree with you, it's probably still true that most people who write books don't earn money from it. Fanfiction writers obviously belong to this group, they write knowing that they will never be able to publish commercially (barring big rewrites). If it's admirable to be motivated purely by love of writing, fanfic writers surely are the most admirable writers of all!

So, what would be the results of barryem's suggestion?

• If we apply this to already published books, a lot of books will become available for free for everybody (good), but we pull out the rug under people and businesses who have made investments under the current copyright regime (bad). If we only apply this going forward, neither of these things happen.
• Fewer books will be written, and significantly fewer books will be published or otherwise made available to readers.
• There will be some increase in the number of new free books, as some people who publish commercially today will continue writing, and will choose to give away their books.
• The quality of new books will go down, because very few people will spend money on professional editing, copyediting, illustrations etc. for books they have to give away.
• The (slow, gradual) improvement we see in more diverse voices getting to tell their stories in print will slow down, and the least privileged people will fall silent first. (A couple of examples of this issue: We need diverse editors and Jeanette Ng's acceptance speech for the Astounding Award (then named John W. Campbell Award))
• A lot of people will lose their jobs, both full time authors and most of the people in the publishing business.

So all in all, I see several serious drawbacks, and a few minor advantages.

Nothing prevents people from publishing books for free now, and some people do -- not just fanfiction, but also original fiction. I've read two books which were published for free first, and later published commercially, They were both good enough the first time that I chose to spend money on the commercial version, and they were both improved in the commercial version. (In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan and Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh, both are highly recommended if you read fantasy! I'm eagerly awaiting another which I've read for free, and will buy the moment I can!)

If we ever get to a post scarcity society with universal income, we should reconsider copyright laws, But then we'd need to reconsider a lot of laws and customs about property and income. (I also think we should change a lot about how this works today, but that's a discussion for the Politics and Religion forum).

[leebase]

In what fantasy world do we think people will just write books for free? Or haven written them, they will "publish" the books. It takes time and money to put one's books "out there"...where ever this "there" will be. Remember that Book service that everyone loved that just closed down? It wouldn't close down if it was making money.

Most people not making money from books doesn't mean "there is no value to having a book making profession". Most people who try to make a restaurant a successful business fail too. Shall we do without restaurants?

Where does this opinion that someone should spend creative effort....and everyone gets to just copy it come from?

It's not yours just because you exist. Just because the technology exists to make a copy...doesn't mean you should be able to.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by leebase

In what fantasy world do we think people will just write books for free? Or haven written them, they will "publish" the books. It takes time and money to put one's books "out there"...where ever this "there" will be. Remember that Book service that everyone loved that just closed down? It wouldn't close down if it was making money.

Didn't we already talk about Star Trek and the lack of currency throughout most of the populace in that franchise?

I quite agree though, removing copyright entirely will turn novel writing into a hobby the results of which likely would never make it beyond friends of the author if they got even that far. To say nothing of the supporting roles around the book industry drying up.

Academic books might come out, only because there are field has strictures on it in addition to copyright which would shame those lifting wholesale from previous works without due credit.

[MarjaE]

Originally Posted by leebase

In what fantasy world do we think people will just write books for free?

People already do that. I mostly write historical notes, and don't really have a good place to publish them. But a lot of people write short stories and novels for free.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by hildea

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh, both are highly recommended if you read fantasy!

Silver in the Wood looks very interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.