From Matthew Yglesias (3/30/12), one simple chart that illustrates why copyright terms are way, way, way too long for the good of the culture:
Books published before 1923 are in the public domain; we read a lot of them (based on Amazon shipping figures). Books published in the past 10 or 20 years or so are in copyright, but are still in high demand; they’re making a lot of money for publishers and are encouraging a supply of new books.
Between these two periods, there’s a vast desert of books that are still in copyright but are in very low demand–because the prices that copyright holders want to sell books for are too high for the market. (Publishers are presumably not selling older books at the prices that they would move at out of fear of hurting the market for new books that do sell well.)
If copyright lasted, say, 20 years, the way patents do, this graph suggests that there would be far more books read from the 1930s, ’40s. ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s–at least 10 times as many, and probably far more than that, if you assume people today are more interested in the literature of the 1980s than they are in that of the 1910s.
The culture is allowing a huge number of books to go unread–just to allow publishers to make a relatively small amount of profit from the tiny minority of 89-to-21-year-old books that still get read. It’s a great public policy–if you think Americans read too much.
UPDATE: This graph doesn’t say exactly what I thought it did, though it makes pretty much the same point. It’s not measuring volume of sales; if it were, the most recent decade would presumably be a lot higher. Rather, it’s looking at a random sample of 2,500 fiction books (along with some books about fiction) available in the Amazon warehouse, and seeing when they were published. Public domain works from the late 19th/early 20th centuries are well-represented in the warehouse, whereas there are few from the copyright desert from 1924 up through the 1980s. You can hear Paul Heald, the law professor who compiled the data, explaining his research in the video on this page at the 12:44 mark.
What a bunch of bookworms.
And I’m not referring to these publishers’ reading habits.
You neglect to mention that much of the demand for the older books is because they are mandated reading for students, not because their cost is less.
The real reason for the high cost in books is the scourge of e-books, whose “purchasers” don’t even get to own and cannot pass to their children, not to mention that they create hazardous landfill waste and require continuous cost on their renters’ part to even read; and whose availability for libraries results in a continuous revenue stream for the e-publishers.
Im a collector(and reader )of old books.Books written at a time when people devoured well crafted stories.Stories penned by writers who were forced to work at a very high level because thats what was demanded by the public.Today we have Twilight and the Hunger games.Derivative books,that I would put in the 7th grade reading level.And only there because of some of the content.And although they are a bit addictive like potato chips and Coke, we have to wonder- is this ALL people read today?The bar has sunk quite low.Interesting article about one of the reasons some great books are “invisible “these days.I had not realized the effect copyright had on such things.Oh well back to the thrift shop book shelves.
Of course with Jersey shore,the Kardashian’s,and all the rest on rotation who has time to read anyway.
I haven’t verified this but I have heard that there is now legislation to allow companies to own previously public-domain designated items. The idea is to control all information, it would seem. http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/the-public-domain-why-wipo-should-care
I’m a bit cynical as to whether an improvement in regulations like this would make any signficant difference in the awareness/benevolence of the electorate. As I recall hearing, there’s something like 5ooo new titles released by publishers each year, so there’s plenty of good information in print format out there but, “A third of high-school graduates (in the US) never read another book for the rest of their lives, and neither do 42 percent of college graduates.” * so it’s questionable whether the overall effect of improvement in copyright law would be politically noticeable…
(* “Empire of Illusion”, by Chris Hedges, P44)
It strikes me that these books come from the most progressive era in US history. Is that an accident?
Good point about this creating a cultural blind spot that leaves out the progressive era. Kids today look at how docile the baby boom near-retirees are and think that timidity and selfishness are the way life is. If they had better access to the ideas put forth pre-Reagan, they might have an epiphany.
I think there are many reasons why this sample of books might be as skewed as it is. For example, books wear out. A book from the 1940s might well be readable, while a book that is over a century old might be falling apart.
Since many libraries are relatively recent, it may be more difficult to get a book from a century ago from the library.
Also, we tend to devalue recent history, thinking we know it, while older books carry a cachet of mystery.
The knock on copyright may be correct or not. I don’t know. But as an author who has dealt with all aspects of publishing and marketing, I’m pretty sure that copyright holders for books 60 years old–probably the heirs of authors, rather than authors themselves–are not setting the price. That price is set by publishers, retailers, and customers.
This whole idea seems to spawn even more questions:
Is it really possible to compare a copyright and a patent?
Don’t people also have to look at what else copyright offers?
Doesn’t it also protect writings and give reference to the true authors? In ancient times, writers ( borrowed or stole) whole pages from each other.
Will Elvis museums soon be springing up everywhere?
Snow White was Disney-ized, a long time ago, but can Halloween costume makers now grab that design, and not have Disney sue them?
Would this idea of shortening the time of ownership of words and books also extend to art and prints?
Can patents and writings really be compared, because in 20 years a patent may make so much more money than a writing could in even 200 years.
If “Intellectual property” ideas are changed, how does that affect people, jobs and the economy and the planet? ( I am thinking about indigenous people who developed seeds for centuries, and then a corporate person patented this work and claimed it.)
I consider myself both lucky and unlucky.
The good news is that the books I enjoy most are read by almost nobody, so they find their way to the remainders rack quickly, where the choice is large and the price is low.
The bad news is the books I like most are read by almost nobody, so once I read them, and think about them, I want to talk about them. Conversation ends up like talking down a well, or to an illiterate, or to a cow, or to a dog, or to a wall.
I read many more books now that I have a Kindle. You can get lots of public domain books and classics free. When I am made aware of a book on a website or other outlet, I can have a copy within minutes, and the Kindle will read it to me in the car if I want.
Just read that certain schools have told their journalism students that spelling is no longer important.That is what spell check is for.OOFA what the hell?One of those schools by the way has 39 tenured profs.38 are listed as liberal Democrats.37 of those believe when polled, that their is nothing wrong with teaching the ideal(left)they believe in-in their classes.Just saying……..
Off topic troll is off topic trolling.
One of the comments used the term “intellectual property”. That term
is pure confusion, since it equates several unrelated and disparate
laws. To pose a question using the term “intellectual property”
is Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Even copyright law and patent law are totally different aside from
one sentence in the Constitution, and totally unrelated in practice.
So if you compare copyrights with patents, the proper conclusion is
“They are so different that this comparison isn’t illuminating.”
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.
See http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.html for why you should
reject the Amazon Swindle and similar devices, and
http://stallman.org/articles/amazon.html for various reasons
you shouldn’t buy from Amazon.
North Carolina said: You neglect to mention that much of the demand for the older books is because they are mandated reading for students, not because their cost is less.
Yeah, and the fact that they become mandated reading because they’re so much cheaper without a legally mandated monopoly cost has absolutely nothing to do with it. /s You might have noticed that fanfic is becoming mandated reading in schools now, possibly because most fsnfic authors don’t claim whatever rights they may have in their works, and those that do tend to release them freely. I myself release my works, both fanfic and original, under terms almost identical to the CC-BY-SA licence. The only difference is that I forbid large scale distribution, which the aforementioned licence allows.