
The Missing 20th Century: How copyright protection makes books vanish - bootload
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/
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JulianMorrison
In other words, it has taken the ridiculous cultural productivity of the
internet era to even balance out the downward drag of copyright.

Copyright and patents need to be completely destroyed. They are _not_ worth
the price.

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yuhong
Copyright terms that are _too long_ are not worth the price. Copyright renewal
would be much better.

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slowpoke
There is no period of time that is short enough. Even a year, three months or
a week is too long. Copyright can't keep up with the speed of our culture
anymore. The same goes for patents and progress, essentially. It's time to get
rid of this artifact of the 20th century (along with the eternally backwards
industries around it), it's holding us back.

~~~
JulianMorrison
The shortest time worth considering is a full publishing cycle - from pitch to
advance to raw product to publication to break-even to profit. Given all the
queues in each of the pre-publication phases and the slowness of making back
the cost of preparing a work, I doubt you could squeeze that under 20 years.
Otherwise it's just a cruel tease.

~~~
slowpoke
If this way of publication can't keep up with reality anymore, then I'm afraid
it's not a viable business model, and should be scrapped, not kept on life-
support with increasingly ridiculous monopoly laws which ultimately harm
humanity as a whole.

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tzs
I haven't watched the video, so this question is just based on the article:
does he take into account multiple sources for the same book?

For instance, when a book is still under copyright and is available on Amazon,
it is usually available from one publisher. When a book is not under copyright
and is available on Amazon, it is often available from several different
publishers.

If one book is available from 10 publishers, will it be counted 10 times in
his numbers or just once?

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beambot
If copyrights and patents are "(intellectual) property" and valued
accordingly, how much revenue could the government obtain if they made
companies pay annual "property taxes" on them?

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davidw
How would you value it? One way would be to look at the revenue generated each
year...

It turns out they already tax that, though.

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gte910h
They can set the value at whatever they want. And the government, or anyone,
can buy the rights at that value, 5 years after creation of the work.

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Tycho
It seems we are now in the midst of an all out assault on the concept of
intellectual property. A lot of people see no reason why their right to
consume should be limited or why creators should have some control over the
use of their creations in an advanced civilisation.

~~~
Produce
Maybe because it's effectively free to duplicate said property without
depriving the original owner of it? Intellectual property to physical property
is apples to uranium. Our economic system is out of date in many aspects and
needs an overhaul.

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Tycho
It depends on what your basis of physical property is. I don't want to expend
thousands of words discussing the matter so I'll just direct you here if
you're interested:
[http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.htm...](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_and_copyrights.html)

Personally I am uncomfortable with the parasitical nature of taking somebody
else's artistic creation, for its entertainment value, without any sort of
consent/compensation involved.

~~~
Produce
Thanks for the link.

>An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form.

And here, in the very first and central assumption, in my opinion, lies the
problem. An idea is not a physical object. It does not have the properties of
a physical object and does not act like one either. It has often been said
that knowledge is power and, by extension, granting monopolies on knowledge
also grants a monopoly on power. Funny how these monopolies are considered to
be for the greater good when they directly harm it.

>Personally I am uncomfortable with the parasitical nature of taking somebody
else's artistic creation, for its entertainment value, without any sort of
consent/compensation involved.

As someone who creates art, I welcome this with open arms. The "pay what you
want" business model for artistic creations has been demonstrated to work
_better_ than the old model (e.g. <http://bigthink.com/ideas/41602>). Yet it's
not just the people who pay the equivalent to the full price who benefit but
everyone - rich or poor. It's an inclusive model which respects peoples'
financial status and removes the cultural pay-walls. Open Source Software has
also been proven to deliver robust, high quality products without bleeding
everyone's pockets dry. The Creative Commons is taking off and I suspect that
it will be another such success story.

How can our society be so comfortable with putting a price on culture when
it's our intellectual bread and butter? By limiting the supply of food, we
starve innovation and ensure that what's here today is what's here tomorrow. I
don't know about you, but I want humanity to evolve, not revolve.

For further evidence, exhibit B - [http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/03/30/the-
one-graph-that-expla...](http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/03/30/the-one-graph-
that-explains-why-copyright-is-too-long/)

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kiba
If you're gunning for book immortality, one of the worst thing you could do is
to copyright it.

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hack_edu
In the States, the act of copyrighting a book makes it eligible to be stored
in the Library of Congress. This more-or-less guarantees its immortality.

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kylec
Wait, if a book isn't copyrighted, it's not eligible for inclusion in the LoC?
How does that make any sense at all?

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rprasad
The act of copyrighting a book includes depositing a copy with the Library of
Congress. The LoC used to accept all submissions; now it only accepts
submissions filed pursuant to a copyright.

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MPSimmons
Except for piracy, which gives information when the government won't allow
copyrights to expire.

