France: All your books are belong to us

[wizwor]

Originally Posted by crich70

That's the problem with the internet. Telling what is accurate and what isn't. Anyone can post anything online and claim that it's the truth and someone somewhere will believe it.

This is not unique to the internet.

[Pulpmeister]

I am deeply unenthusiastic about Government ownership of copyrights--.

It's already damn near impossible to fight your way through Freedom of Information obstacles (Freedom from information!) to get you hands on something which the taxpayer paid for the the first place.

And the costs can ber staggering.

Like hundreds of bucks for a copy of a 40-page file. If they condescend to let you have it, which you can't bank on.

Cure worse than the disease, methinks. Sir Humphrey Appleby would love it though. Think of ther regiments of bureaucrats you'd need to run the show. Like the soviet union in the 50s, where information was state owned.

Life plus 50 sounds okay to me, but frankly I think a straight period would be simpler. 75 years from date of publication, biblical 3 score years and 10, plus five for the hell of it.

Or death, whichever is longer.

Which takes us back to 1937 I think.

Can't be too many authors who were actively publishing before 1937, and who are still enjoying royalties from sales.

[MV64]

Originally Posted by teh603

Not likely to ever happen unless Disney can get perpetual copyright over everything it produces. After all, that's what's pushed every single copyright extension bill in the US; Mickey Mouse being about to enter the public domain.

How great would it be to get enough organization and money together to beat Disney at their own game and push through copyright reform. Unfortunately it's not a "sexy" issue and only sexy issues draw the attention of the masses. Unsexy issues always favor the industries.

[Justin Nemo]

There is a lot of excellent work which is now out of print and generally unavailable to the public, but still covered by copyright. I can see how this would benefit people who wanted access to this work. It has to be kept in mind that France doesn't have a public lending library system, so the idea is to make these books available for online reading or download.

From what I understand this only applies to French books and I can't make head nor tail of them.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

It has to be kept in mind that France doesn't have a public lending library system...

I beg your pardon???

France most assuredly does have public libraries!

[Belfaborac]

I'm not really up on French public libraries, but the association Culture et Bibliothèque pour Tous at least runs lending libraries I believe, as does the Paris City Council.

[vice-versa]

Almost every single small village in France has a public lending library or at least the deparment lends book to their library (you can even sometime ask for them on the internet, and then buses, sometimes equiped as libraries, come and bring the books). It allows people even in villages to have a greater choice of books. Quite almost every town as a public library and in big cities, there are more than one. Civilisation visited us, I assure you