Market Failure? The Case Of Copyright

[Even with the weakness of most pro-piracy arguments, I have yet to see

anything as garbled as this. Look first at his paragraph on copyright
history; it is not simplified, but totally incorrect. Let that prepare
you for logical inconsistency, poor interpretation of statistics and
incorrect assumptions.
For example, anyone who understands commercial imperatives will know
that there are always sellers if the product is free; the major part of
the reason pd works are most readily available [often in indecipherable
OCR editions] in a digital age is because sales require little effort.
There are examples of a wholly mechanised operations where single annual
sales of each title will produce a profit worth having. This does not
mean they have most impact - and there are no figures or research on
this, which is the real focus of 'readily available ideas'. Please note
also that a garbled presentation of a great pd work is of no value at all.
For a second example. No one has any idea what proportion of those
titles that disappear into oblivion deserve to be there. In a sense book
publishing is a test bed for an idea clothed in words and graphics. The
idea that every one of those is a masterpiece is worthy of 'Make a
fortune while you sleep'.
Thirdly, once ideas are published, or otherwise available, those ideas
are in the pd. They are not the thing copyrighted.
So read this at peril of having your brain rotted, but read it to
understand that there is clearly (from other recent pieces) a new
campaign building that is trying to look erudite. If they can't get the
history of international copyright correct to being with, it falls at
the first hurdle.
And do note the very interesting slippery admission that Google is no
longer trying to be a pirate; is that true?]

Market Failure? The Case Of Copyright
---------------------------------
Public domain works are far more widely distributed, while protected works have a habit of falling down the memory hole
http://www.booktrade.info/i.php/35953-39915
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=39089
[This is the paragraph that gets international copyright history wrong, wrong, wrong. Not to mention total ignorance of contracts.]
'...Copyright regulation is a good example of this. There was no universal enforcement until the very late part of the 19th century, and terms were mostly  short in the early days of this regulation. In the course of the 20th century, regulations became ever more tight and the copyright terms ever longer, so much so that today, the words you sign away to a conventional publisher are theirs to keep for your lifetime plus 70 years!...'







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