Why public domain

[barryem]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I never heard it described that way before.

I hadn't either. I did a bit of googling and I found quite a bit about early paperbacks that I didn't know. I knew Penguin began publishing paperbacks in the USA in 1935 and that was when they first became "a thing". I had read some things about the history of paperbacks a few years ago and I thought I remembered them beginning in the early 1950s just before I began reading them. But it seems I remembered wrong.

Interestingly, I read somewhere yesterday, I don't recall where but one of the sites Google found for me, that Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" was one of the first paperbacks. I just googled again and I can't find that reference now. I don't think I imagined it.

It seems one of the early paperbacks was Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth". That was in 1938.

I'm not sure how paperbacks are distinguished from the pulps and paper novels popular during the civil war and thereafter, but they seem to be taken as something different. I've never seen one so I'm not sure why. I have more googling to do.

Barry

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by barryem

I hadn't either. I did a bit of googling and I found quite a bit about early paperbacks that I didn't know.

I'm not sure how paperbacks are distinguished from the pulps and paper novels popular during the civil war and thereafter, but they seem to be taken as something different. I've never seen one so I'm not sure why. I have more googling to do.

Barry

Interesting, Barry. Please update us on what you find out.

Thasaidon

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hmmm... Messages between Frederic Remington and William Randolph Hearst:

“Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.”
Hearst sent back a note: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

The power of a free press.

You may also watch "Wag the dog", the movie.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by leebase

Don’t need to show anything of the sort. The principal is enough. You create something....it’s yours, not society's.

It's the society that keeps you alive - and in history due course, also has kept your ancestors alive.

One has to contribute to the society, not only to get unduly advantages.
"I am not gonna pay the police, for nobody appears to have something with me." but the policemen who are paid by the others also protect you. If nobody will protect you, you may be sorry in an amount of time depending on your geographical location.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by leebase

Taxes are an entirely different subject. The cash in you bank account is property but not property tax.

Do you mean that it's not taxed as property? If so, then that is true. Most banks do charge monthly fees to store your money, though.

I also want to point out that my post was not just about taxes, though. It was also about the costs to maintain property. I have to pay to maintain my house and car. I have to have a place to store my other property, and that place has to be paid for in some way.

I imagine when George Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars for $4B, he had to pay taxes.

Yes...he probably had to pay tax on the capital gains he got (it wouldn't be counted as "income" would it? You don't earn income by selling property, right?) but if he hadn't sold it, he would have been able to keep copyright and not paid anything to maintain it. Even if he never made another penny off of it, he would have been able to keep copyright without paying a penny.

[leebase]

Tax is simply it's own....not simple at all....topic.

If society wanted to tax copyright holders the way they do other forms of property....I don't have any problem with that other than I might have when fighting taxes in general. It would be much preferred...in my book....than society taking ownership of an artist's work.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by leebase

Tax is simply it's own....not simple at all....topic.

If society wanted to tax copyright holders the way they do other forms of property....I don't have any problem with that other than I might have when fighting taxes in general. It would be much preferred...in my book....than society taking ownership of an artist's work.

Ok--so forget the tax issue. Let's focus on the costs of maintaining/storing physical property. Currently there is no cost to maintain copyright.

Shari

[gmw]

Originally Posted by leebase

Tax is simply it's own....not simple at all....topic.

If society wanted to tax copyright holders the way they do other forms of property....I don't have any problem with that other than I might have when fighting taxes in general. It would be much preferred...in my book....than society taking ownership of an artist's work.

What society giveth, society can taketh away.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by gmw

What society giveth, society can taketh away.

Society still has to be careful with what they taketh away lest they discourage people from writing at all.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by gmw

What society giveth, society can taketh away.

No doubt. But people do what they are incentivized to do.

[gmw]

I have a vested interest in wanting copyright to exist for some period of time. But I also have a vested interest in wanting limits. Not because I want to write fan-fiction, that's never been my thing for reading or writing, but because perpetual copyright could rapidly make writing very complicated - especially given the broadening interpretation that has happened.

Forever is a long time. What you call incentive may well get to a point where it backfires because the writer can't tell whether someone else in the last 1000 years has written a story about a boy wizard called Harry Potter. It's almost impossible to tell that now, but you're talking about setting a million monkeys (my apologies to my fellow authors) to a million word-processors for a million years. At least some of those monkeys are going to start getting very nervous about duplicating elements of other monkeys' stories.


Now if you want to say: copyright can be perpetual if the owner continues to pay some (greater than nominal) fees, then you might get my interest.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by leebase

Taxes are an entirely different subject. The cash in you bank account is property but not property tax.

No, cash in your bank account is not subject to property tax. If you had to pay tax on it when it is by itself already taxed by design would go a little far. Cash, as a wasting asset, is subject to a tax. It is called inflation.

[Philippe D.]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Cash, as a wasting asset, is subject to a tax. It is called inflation.

Just because you are losing part of the value doesn't make it a tax. A tax is something that goes to the government and makes it possible to finance said government's activity.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Philippe D.

Just because you are losing part of the value doesn't make it a tax. A tax is something that goes to the government and makes it possible to finance said government's activity.

And who exactly has control over the rate of inflation? The government in need of more money.

[Ghitulescu]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Society still has to be careful with what they taketh away lest they discourage people from writing at all.

Nobody forced Platon, Herodot, Aristotle, Newton and many great thinkers of the world to write - for our own good.

On the other hand, the libraries and bookshops are full of all kind of stupidities written by authors that are forced by contracts to publish a book a year.