30 years? Try less than that..... 10 years, max, seeing as how most books are read and gone in that time frame. Now, they COULD have a thing that renews the copyright if you have RELEASED the book in some form in the past 10 years, for another 10 years.... up to 4 times or until you die.
Copyright used to last 27-30 years... up until Disney and co. decided that they haven't milked Mickey Mouse enough, 30 years used to be perfectly sufficient, and no one had any complaints. Authors whose copyrights ran out simply wrote more books. Movie makers would simply re-cast/re-interpret plots into new and better forms. Musicians would simply come up with new music.
Now, we have a whole generation of authors, movie-makers, and musicians whining about royalties as if they had some sort of right to creative works that should have died a natural death a long time ago.
Now, we see descendants of authors shouting as if they had some sort of aristocratic right to the work of their parents/uncles.aunts/etc. , and corporations acting as if someone's long-spoken idea is a thing to be monetized until Judgment Day.
...and people wonder why the latest movies, books, and songs simply suck. It's because everyone is afraid of getting dragged into court, so they're more focused on avoiding than they are on creating, and the results visibly suffer.
So to para-phrase the article "GREED" and "OLD BUSINESS ATTEMPTS TO REMAIN RELEVANT".
I find the whole digital book industry an utter joke. Any slackjaw can buy a $20 scanner and if the scanner doesn't come with OCR software buy software for $5. At that point they can digitize as many books as they want and save it into an open office writer file.. poof they can instantly save it to PDF.
The fact that Old Publishing companies claim that processing and conversion costs $15-40k per book (or worse per 50 pages) is a total joke. The same can be said with the rest of the entertainment/media industry. Coning artists and content creators into believing that they are still relevant and required to accomplish distribution of the artist's works.
Over the next 15-20 years as new artists come into the market I am sure they will have grown up in the digital age and will inherently know how irrelevant the old guard is.
I could make a PDF of a book in decent quality by cutting apart an older book in one day for less than 100 dollars. Actually, I have done that with hentai mangas..... cutting the books apart, scanning the pictures in very high resolutions, and then zipping up the .jpeg's and converting the .jpeg's into a PDF using ACDSee Pro 3.
No batteries, nothing to break, works when wet and dries, doesn't kill me financially if lost or stolen, and when done, I can go to the used Book 1.0 store and trade it for other Book 1.0's
Hardcopy certainly does have those advantages. For me, though, I like the portability. I have an old PocketPC currently that fits in my pocket and when I'm on the long train commute I have to make a couple days a week, I enjoy the convenience of not having to decide what mood I'm in ahead of time. Instead I can choose from dozens of different books right at that moment, and if i get bored with one, I can flip over to another, without having to carry dozens of them in my laptop bag.
For people who enjoy reading at home (as I sometimes do as well) hardcopy is perfectly fine, but for on the road convenience, e-books are the future.
@bookshire You are right however I don't like the whole idea of having to own digital books at all. I am willing to pay a subscription that opens me up to read any book I want, but I will never pay the same price for digital as I would hard copy. Hard copy publishers pay in resources per book, digital they only pay once and just spit out another copy in the time it takes for someone to download it. Books are one thing that should go in the cloud, makes way more sense than storing your latest documents with companies that can read it and maintain copies at any time, bad enough google, M$, and any other web email can read what I send and receive. I do applaud google on their attempt to digitize for free books that don't get read very much, they are protecting our history by doing so, anyone that tries to retain a copyright for too long, sorry we are going to copy and distribute in a fair manner whether you like it or not.
The Amazon Online Reader now has over 360,000 books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs available available, including more than 101 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers. I know music copyright expire every 70 years., now I here an authors copyright expires every 30 years.
AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos has a button under most paper backs, newspapers and magazines subscriptions asking the viewer to click a link if the buyer want the illustration in a kindle format. Soon Publishers Clearing House and others will se that they are loosing money when they are not going accord to the Kindle era of today.
Web giant is spending $120 million to beef up its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, according to filings with the city reviewed by the San Jose Mercury News.
Tor's "obfsproxy" technology would make encrypted data look innocuous and let it dodge government censors. That could help citizens in Iran reach blocked sites as antigovernment protests reportedly loom.
George Lucas has just released his version of "Star Wars" in 3D, but c'mon--the guy believes Greedo shot first. Why not make your own Star Wars world? In the first installment of a Crave series, a crack team of crafters fight the power and turn paper bags into the Rebel Alliance's Admiral Ackbar. It's a sack!
Now, they COULD have a thing that renews the copyright if you have RELEASED the book in some form in the past 10 years, for another 10 years.... up to 4 times or until you die.
Now, we have a whole generation of authors, movie-makers, and musicians whining about royalties as if they had some sort of right to creative works that should have died a natural death a long time ago.
Now, we see descendants of authors shouting as if they had some sort of aristocratic right to the work of their parents/uncles.aunts/etc. , and corporations acting as if someone's long-spoken idea is a thing to be monetized until Judgment Day.
...and people wonder why the latest movies, books, and songs simply suck. It's because everyone is afraid of getting dragged into court, so they're more focused on avoiding than they are on creating, and the results visibly suffer.
I find the whole digital book industry an utter joke. Any slackjaw can buy a $20 scanner and if the scanner doesn't come with OCR software buy software for $5. At that point they can digitize as many books as they want and save it into an open office writer file.. poof they can instantly save it to PDF.
The fact that Old Publishing companies claim that processing and conversion costs $15-40k per book (or worse per 50 pages) is a total joke. The same can be said with the rest of the entertainment/media industry. Coning artists and content creators into believing that they are still relevant and required to accomplish distribution of the artist's works.
Over the next 15-20 years as new artists come into the market I am sure they will have grown up in the digital age and will inherently know how irrelevant the old guard is.
patents=min(if (used in commerce 20yrs),else(3 years). not available for software, plants, genes, ...
No batteries, nothing to break, works when wet and dries, doesn't kill me financially if lost or stolen, and when done, I can go to the used Book 1.0 store and trade it for other Book 1.0's
For people who enjoy reading at home (as I sometimes do as well) hardcopy is perfectly fine, but for on the road convenience, e-books are the future.
Hmmm...an online library. Interesting idea. I wonder if brick and mortar libraries will move in this direction over time.
AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos has a button under most paper backs, newspapers and magazines subscriptions asking the viewer to click a link if the buyer want the illustration in a kindle format. Soon Publishers Clearing House and others will se that they are loosing money when they are not going accord to the Kindle era of today.