Book People Archive

Re: A book I would like to see online


On Sat, 30 Dec 2000, Joseph Esposito wrote:
> If I may make a provocative point, the reason that books like this one are
> not available online or elsewhere (I know nothing of the publishing history
> of this particular work)is precisely because they are no longer anyone's
> property.  This is the downside of the public domain.
             
This is not quite correct.  Public domain means that anyone in the
public owns the property.  In case of intellectual works (as opposed
to land from which the term "domain" comes), you, I, and everyone
in the U.S. own the intellectual works whose copyright has expired.

Copyrighted works also have similar problems that the public
domain works have.  Every year, at least one billion copyrighted
intellectual works have been created on earth.  (According to
the United Nations, the world population should be more than
6 billion people and I am taking a very low estimate that one
billion of them create something like letters, reports, essays,
poems, paintings, songs, etc.)  How many of these copyrighted works
will be available on-line 50 years from now?  Very little.  Is that
the downside of copyright?  No, it is just that it all depends on
the interest that the people have in these works.

It may sound very strange but the public domain has a better chance
to last than copyright does.  Because at least 200,000,000
Americans own the public domain works, at least one of them will
be interested in making the works available on-line.  That cannot
be said for copyrighted works.
             
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo@[redacted]>