I agree with Exapno’s assertion that control is the real issue. But that inevitably has to mean not creator control, but owner control. And that gets into conflict with the idea of a cultural legacy. Which might not, but ought to, be important to all of us.
Take NBC, which used to burn every reel of film in the vaults after a few years, ensuring that thousands of hours of programming would never be seen again. Are the IP rights of big corporations really more important than preserving a cultural resource that in a sense becomes everyone’s “property” the moment it goes out over the air?
If it’s about control, shouldn’t copyright expire upon the death of the author?
Our copyright system was not handed down by the Archangel Gabriel. It is a social bargain. The purpose of copyright laws is only secondarily to benefit the producers. The primary purpose is to benefit the rest of us, and it turns out that a good way for the rest of us to get more books and such is to figure out a scheme whereby the creators benefit.
But when copyright doesn’t act to benefit the rest of us, what then?
If I own a grocery store and die, shouldn’t the store be thrown open to the public for free vegetables?
IP is property and needs to be treated analogously. It’s already much more limited. Unlike every other type of property IP is taken from the owner after a period of time and stops being an asset. Authors’ families have to eat even if the author dies.
And Beware of Doug, NBC was the conduit for the programs but not the copyright owner of record for almost any.
Sorry for the continual hijack, but such comments are too inflammatory to let lie.
To try to get back to this subject… libraries buy the books on their shelves, so as an author, I would hope that every single library has my book. I get a royalty when they do. There are publishing houses (and genres of books) that target the library market exclusively.
Libraries and P2P networks are engaging in completely different activities. A better analogy for libraries would be radio stations. Will some people listen to a song on the radio for free rather than buy it? Sure, but the radio station pays for the CD and/or pays a licensing fee.
It may interest the OP to know that a number of authors and publishers will threaten persons in the used book trade with lawsuits for “selling my book used, and without buying it from me”.
I’m not sure about the rationale, but I do know that if you ask nicely, Amazon will remove your book from its catalog, thus locking out the title from exposure on the world’s biggest book marketplace.
I don’t believe any of them have actually sued; rather, they attempt to bully booksellers into compliance with varying degrees of success.
It does work from time to time; what’s typical is that a bookseller who lists books on Amazon, Ebay, Alibris, Biblio and ABEbooks will withdraw the books in question from Amazon and Ebay but leave them up on the other site.
On a $15 book with poor market demand, it’s barely worth responding to the nutjob author.
Now, this is odd, but apparently Barnes & Noble asks Amazon to remove books with B&N as the publisher from Amazon’s catalog. Yet again, Amazon complies. There are books that get missed in the takedown requests, however.
I’d still like to hear of some actual examples, with names.
The B&N thing is probably pretty simple. B&N publishes books that it tells you are exclusives to B&N, so it has a stake in not having them appear elsewhere. But that is totally irrelevant to the other issue.
I have done several books for B&N’s publishing arm (Sterling), and I can confirm that they sometimes have exclusives. They don’t ask Amazon to de-list them, they simply don’t make them available to the trade. The publisher gets 50% on titles they sell to other stores and 100% on titles they sell in their own store, so it’s s strategy that can work.