Copyright may turn out not to be the wave of the future. I hope there is a better way found for all of us, Museums and private citizens.
I fail to see any other mechanism than copyright (the control over replication and sale of the work) for creators and producers of works to get paid for the very large amounts of time and money they put into them. It is just not possible to do all this work free--or even for any cost reduction beyond a couple of dollars per item. "Loss leaders" and experiments to sell other things and services than the item being given away, don't count.
I've been a self-publisher since 1993. In all this time, although I've seen tons of people on the net advising each other to rip off copyrighted works (including mine), and complaining about prices, and advancing entitlement arguments (often positively screaming about their entitlement), I have yet to see a single person send me a donation. (Admittedly I have asked for none and expect none.) Nor have I often seen the idea that creators of works deserve fair payment advanced by people who are not themselves creators of works or involved in their production in some way.
As for Google, they do plan to charge the public for the works whose copyrights they ripped off, providing they get away with ripping them off in the first place. They didn't spend millions of dollars scanning millions of books out of altrusim. Judge Chin is still pondering the proposed Settlement, and it will probably be appealed for years whether he accepts or rejects it--though I hope he does.
I must say, I find the attitude of both the public and of big businesses like Google, that they have a divine right to use my work and manipulate my finances in any and every way they see fit, so contemptuous, degrading, and hostile that I am seriously considering getting out of this business.
Fran Lavolta Press www.lavoltapress.com _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
