Why The 'Missing 20th Century' Of Books Is Even Worse Than It Seems

from the digging-deeper-into-the-numbers dept

Tue, Apr 3rd 2012 11:31am — Leigh Beadon

There's been quite a bit of chatter lately about some research by Professor Paul Heald from the University of Illinois. Heald recently delivered a seminar on the stagnating effects of extended copyright terms in the U.S., and blogger Eric Crampton immediately called attention to one data-set about books that is particularly telling (found through Slate) which illustrates what The Atlantic has dubbed "The Missing 20th Century". It's the number of titles available from Amazon as new editions (as opposed to used copies) graphed by the decade of original publication:

The source of that massive fall-off at the midpoint is seemingly simple: all books published in the U.S. in 1922 or earlier are in the public domain. What's immediately apparent from this graph is the fact that copyright is limiting the public's access to older works—but why and how, exactly? The answer lies in the reality of what a copyright is really worth, commercially, and how long it retains that value—and it sheds light on another problem with copyright law.

To better understand this, we can look to some earlier study from William Patry in his book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. For works created between 1923 and 1963, creators or publishers had to register to receive copyright protection for 28 years, and could then renew for another 28. Patry looked at data from 1958/59, and saw that in every medium except film, the majority of creators didn't bother to renew their copyright registrations:

If an author or publisher didn't renew the copyright on a book, it means they didn't think they could make any more money with it. The monopoly of copyright had lost its value—so much so that it was worth less than the time it takes to submit a form. But, as Heald's graph shows us, that doesn't mean the work itself has lost value, because lots of publishers clearly want to publish pre-1923 public domain books. This is something most copyright supporters ignore: entering the public domain can actually renew the value of art, and can (and does) stimulate the economy by allowing others to exploit additional commercial value from a work beyond what was possible under copyright. The commercial usefulness of a monopoly on a book has a shorter shelf-life than the monopoly actually granted by copyright law. Based on Patry's findings, that shelf life is somewhere under 28 years, otherwise more people would have renewed their registration—but copyright lasts much longer than 28 years. Thus you get the giant gulf on Heald's chart: in between the pre-1923 public domain books and the books that are new enough to still be actively sold, there are several decades of titles that are no longer worth anything to their rightsholders, but can't be offered by anyone else because they are still effectively under copyright.

Yes, just effectively—not actually. As you may have noticed, there seems to be a contradiction here: if the majority of copyright registrations went un-renewed, then the majority of books published between 1923 and 1963 have lapsed into the public domain alongside the books from 1922 and earlier, so the drop-off in Heald's chart should be much, much smaller. This is not a conflict in the data, it's a symptom another massive and entirely separate problem with copyright law which I discussed in a recent post: the difficulty of determining a work's status.

The fact is, the majority of 1923-63 books are indeed in the public domain because they weren't renewed, but there's only one way to know this for sure: checking the records held by the Copyright Office. None of the records from that period have been digitized yet, so the only way to check them is by actually going to Washington and visiting the physical card catalogue, or paying a researcher to do it for you. Obviously this added effort and expense drastically limits the appeal of these suddenly-not-so-public domain works—and as the numbers from Amazon demonstrate, it's having a very real effect. Publishers are clearly eager to offer public domain titles, but are only comfortable doing so when the lack of copyright is guaranteed. All those later works are effectively removed from the public domain, preventing economic activity and making them hard for people to obtain.

Now, of course, neither registration nor renewal is required: everyone is granted a copyright on everything they create, lasting until long after their death, despite clear evidence that the value of a commercial monopoly almost always expires in a fraction of that time. Sometime in the future, someone is going to reprise Heald's graph, and that gulf of forgotten works that benefit nobody is going to be a whole lot bigger.

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Filed Under: books, copyright terms, paul heald, public domain
Companies: amazon

59 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:43am

This whole situation is absolutely ridiculous. Copy protection shouldn't even last this long to begin with, even if the list of public domain works due to non-renewals were digitized.

We have two layers of ridiculousness here, not only should all of these works be in the public domain because of their age, but they should have been in the public domain because because their copy protection lengths should have expired a long time ago if it weren't for retroactive extensions (layer two).

and to add a third layer or ridiculousness, some of these works might be in the public domain if they were created before a certain time period during which a manual extension request was required of them to get an extension and yet we don't have reasonable access to the titles of those works to know which ones are, even though they really should all be in the public domain because A: If it weren't for the retroactive extensions their terms would have expired by now and B: copy protection shouldn't last this long anyways.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:46am

Re:
not only should all of these works be in the public domain because of their age and they're not (layer one) *
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monkyyy, 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:46am

why must old people have records, why cant they just send it to google books or something
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Ninja (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:47am

Not surprising, copyright is all about a few greedy people locking up a whole lot of culture. The artists themselves either don't need copyright or they don't need copyright but have been successfully brainwashed by the MAFIAA into believing they need it. The ones that really need copyright are usually the failed ones. Or copyright trolls.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:49am

That's one theory on what's happening.

Another, simpler explanation (and the simplest explanation is usually correct) is that every book between 1925 and the first Harry Potter book was garbage and not worth publishing or buying.
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John Doe, 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:49am

A picture is worth a thousand words
When you consider the ability to publish digitally now, that graph should be going up in a a very steep angle through present day. This just goes to show how copyright is not really about encouraging the useful arts but is actually holding it back.
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Rekrul, 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:58am

This just goes to show how copyright is not really about encouraging the useful arts but is actually holding it back.

What is this "useful arts" nonsense that you speak of? Everyone knows that copyrights are exclusively for the benefit of large corporations.
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Jeremy Lyman (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:00pm

Step it up
I'm really surprised there isn't an organization of publishers haranguing the Copyright Office to get their archives in order so they have access to a whole new wealth of free content for publication. I may even believe their claims of lost potential sales since NOBODY can access lost works like these.

(I also can't believe I just spelled 'haranguing' correctly.)
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Bas Grasmayer (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:06pm

More new books from 1900-1910 alone in Amazon's warehouse, than there are from 1930-1989.

Not sure what to say.
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Kurata, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:07pm

While we are talking about books, an interesting note is that France is about to force repubishing through numeral means of books that are now unexploited, yet were exploited before 2001.
While how unexploited is determined, that seemed like something worth talking about though it goes as follow :

When an exploited book is found, the author is contacted, and has 6 months to say whether or not he wants to allow this republishing.
If he refuses, he has 2 years to somehow publish it himself.
If after 6 months, he gave no answer, then it's considered as an allowance. THen he has 6 months to forbid the publishing, only on the grounds that he'd hurt his life or something along those lines.
Else, they are considered public domains.

http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/expert/51198/quand-le-droit-vient-opportunement-au -secours-des-fabricants-de-liseuses-numeriques.shtml
http://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/societe/arti cle/suppression-des-droits-d-auteur-113680

sources, in their original language.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:08pm

But every wanna be big selling author aspires to have their work sit unread in library a decade or two after it's published! That way you'll know you were once big, but now you're a has been.
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Donnicton, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:09pm

Re:
Statistics backed up with verifiable sources vs. asserted opinions and no citations...

I wonder what's typically going to win in most circles?
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Zakida Paul (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:10pm

It saddens me to think of great works being locked in a vault somewhere and access limited even though the author is dead. In my opinion, copyright should expire when the content creator dies as they are no longer benefiting from their work, obviously.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:11pm

Re:
That's not simpler by any stretch of the imagination.

That would involve a world-wide epidemic that consumes good authors and render them unable to write well, over a period of 80 years.

Assuming copyright scares away people by raising the cost/risk of publishing books assumes no actors not in evidence.
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PlagueSD (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:15pm

Re:
Disney does this exact thing. They lock all their movies up in their "vault" only to bring them out for a "limited" time (normally during the holidays) for the buying frenzy...Then back they go to the vault...
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G Ette Reele, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:26pm

It's about money.
It's always about money.
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Carlos Sol�s a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:29pm

Fact: I wrote about a similar topic yesterday
Go figure, yesterday I wrote a blog-post (in Spanish, but I can translate it) about how the public domain has become untrustable: https://azkware.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/por-que-el-dominio-publico-se-ha-vuelto-inconfiable/
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:29pm

Another aspect to all this is that it locks up massive amounts of art, culture, and information not only from publication and purchase but also from general public access and (specific to my profession) libraries. Works in the public domain are immensely helpful to libraries and their collections--especially when they're digitized and available for free or for very little (as with Project Gutenberg and its free access). Even printed public domain works are often sold for a song. Saves money, gets more things to people who need and want them. These are materials that can and should be made available. But, as usual, instead of being about access and knowledge, it's all about the Almighty Dollar (or at least the Almighty Lawsuit).

But here's what it comes down to for me: what a shoddy digitization program you've got there, Copyright Office. Shaaaaame! You're a part of the Library of Congress. You should know better. Even out here in Podunk, USA, we've got a better program. Shaaaaaaaaaame!
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Greg (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:30pm

Re: Re:
Ah, the Disney "vault". My coworker and I (we both have kids) have had a few good laughs over that one. I.E. OMG, it's in the "vault"! Wow, there's no way of getting to that Disney flick now! What is a person who wants to see that movie to do? LOL.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:40pm

This whole piece is just that a PIECE OF SHIT. Trying to explain that copyright is a reason for the lack of books from the 20th century being offered by Amazon is ridiculous. Amazon offers titles that sell. The reason for the fewer titles in the 20th century has little to do with copyright and more to do with popularity. If we were to use your logic (the level of copyright determines the number of titles offered, we should be arguing (based on the graph) that works in the public domain from the early 1800s should be put back under copyright protection because clearly there are far fewer 1800s books than there are even in the 1950s. Take your anti business blog and go to a piracy haven country (just pick a country on the piracy watch list).
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TimothyAWiseman (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:42pm

Not needing registration is good, but the term is too long
"Now, of course, neither registration nor renewal is required: everyone is granted a copyright on everything they create, lasting until long after their death, despite clear evidence that the value of a commercial monopoly almost always expires in a fraction of that time."

I personally think it is a good thing that registration is not required. Amoungst other benefits it makes it simple to know that everything new is copyrighted unless explicitly released and, in an era where more is published then ever before, saves a tremendous amount of paperwork for registering.

With that said, the copyright term is far too long and there is tremendous value in a large public domain. The copyright term should probably be well short of the 28 years mentioned.
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Steph, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:46pm

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/ - renewal records can be found online. The year to look at is the year the renewal would have been filed (so, 28 years after the initial publication date), and the site above points to sources where digital versions of those renewal records can be found.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:47pm

Re: Take your anti business blog and go to a piracy haven country
Yeah. Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath and As I Lay Dying and Gone with the Wind all suck. No one reads those. Fuck The Good Earth too. And The Big Sleep. And The Hobbit? Who the hell has even heard of that?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 12:48pm

Re:
The big problem with having copyrights end with the author's death is that it creates a perverse incentive for competing publishers to off the author so they can publish the author's works themselves.

The other problem is how to handle corporate copyrights. Some corporations are pretty much immortal.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 1:04pm

Re:
Those tools are useful, but far from complete, and that still kills the public domain: publishers aren't willing to risk a lawsuit without official confirmation (and according to the copyright office, they don't have official scans of registration docs predating the 70s)
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Dionaea (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 1:19pm

Re: Re:
Which is why 10 to 20 years seems perfectly fair to me. That way no death threats to authors and no issues with the �mmortality of companies. Plus it seems kinda fair that an authors next of kin can profit from the rights for some time should the author drop dead a week after publishing. There's no reason to let several generations afterward profit, but some of these authors have families too you know...
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Ed C., 3 Apr 2012 @ 1:20pm

Re: Re:
"Corporate copyrights" would follow under "work for hire" and thus already have a fixed term.

Personally, I think all copyrights should have a fixed term. Putting the year someone died in to the equation makes things so much more complicated. What about works credited to more and one person, is the copyright based on the year the last person died? What if an older author adds a grandchild who couldn't yet read, not alone write, as a coauthor just to get a longer copyright and give a big middle finger to the public domain? There seems to be no disincentive for this at all.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 1:30pm

Re: Re: Take your anti business blog and go to a piracy haven country
And you only know those books because the publishers can still make enough money on them to keep them in circulation. Good luck finding 20th century books that aren't so profitable. What's available is only the tip of the iceberg of what's out there sitting in corporate vaults unseen for decades.
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Ed C., 3 Apr 2012 @ 1:42pm

Re: Not needing registration is good, but the term is too long
Sorry, but it makes no sense to give all "published" works copyright, regardless of whether the creator wanted it or not. I doubt that most people know, or even care, that their online chatter is copyrighted. Also, the lack of registration makes it nearly impossible to know when a work was first published or by whom! For instance, what if someone 25 years from how wanted to use your very comment in a book about copyright. Tell me exactly how that person could even tell which "Timothy A. Wiseman" wrote it, and contact you for permission?
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EEJ, 3 Apr 2012 @ 2:02pm

Can we help?
Would there be any merit in the public (govt funded or voluntary) donating to accomplish these digitizing efforts, or whatnot? I frequently see techdirt mention suggestions for solving problems that seem simple and yet completely un(der)funded by the country.

Seemingly, I can understand that for the average person working 9-5, copyright/trademark/patent law may seem like it doesn't have any affect on them; conversely by reading these articles it seems that these "rules" cause major effects on the consumer economy....Is there any organization that I can encourage (by donations or such) to pursue these great ideas?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 2:10pm

Re:
"In my opinion, copyright should expire when the content creator dies as they are no longer benefiting from their work, obviously."

Except, in the case of corporations, the listed "content creator" (the corporation) never dies...it just mutates...
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 2:13pm

Re: Re: Re:
""Corporate copyrights" would follow under "work for hire" and thus already have a fixed term."

...which keeps getting extended every time "Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie" approaches the expiration date!
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 2:16pm

Re: Not needing registration is good, but the term is too long
"I personally think it is a good thing that registration is not required. Amoungst other benefits it makes it simple to know that everything new is copyrighted unless explicitly released and, in an era where more is published then ever before, saves a tremendous amount of paperwork for registering."

And, if someone is interested in reprinting your material, they track the copyrights how, exactly?
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Keroberos (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 2:42pm

I'm curious, how are they handling duplicates? Are the discarding them? If not that could be heavily distorting the data, i.e for every version of The Hobbit there are 20 versions of Alice in Wonderland.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 3:59pm

Re:
I am confused. Are you really trolling or not? I only ask; because, it is so bad you're starting to ping on my sarc meter. Now I don't know whether to refute your shitty arguments or hit the funny button.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 4:01pm

Re:
This whole piece is just that a PIECE OF SHIT. Trying to explain that copyright is a reason for the lack of books from the 20th century being offered by Amazon is ridiculous. Amazon offers titles that sell. The reason for the fewer titles in the 20th century has little to do with copyright and more to do with popularity.

Um. And magically, books published before 1923 have tremendous popularity, and immediately after it aren't popular?

The fact that the copyright/public domain cutoff line is 1923 has nothing to do with it?

I'm sorry, but you're calling bullshit on this chart, and then completely ignoring the chart suggests you need to learn (a lot) about what you're talking about.

If we were to use your logic (the level of copyright determines the number of titles offered, we should be arguing (based on the graph) that works in the public domain from the early 1800s should be put back under copyright protection because clearly there are far fewer 1800s books than there are even in the 1950s. Take your anti business blog and go to a piracy haven country (just pick a country on the piracy watch list).

No offense, but this statement makes you look like a complete idiot. No one is arguing about the absolute amounts, but the clear boost in public domain works. Are you really going to ignore that whole part of the chart?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 5:06pm

Re: Re: Re:
What about works credited to more and one person, is the copyright based on the year the last person died?

Yes. That's exactly what the statute says.
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Laroquod (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 5:39pm

Re:
An even simpler explanation is that were no books written between 1925 and the first Harry Potter book; obviously since you believe the simplest explanation is correct, you must be forced to believe that then.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 8:59pm

If more than 90% of the books published in that period are technically public domain, why aren't publishers rummaging through the catalog to find out which works have been freed up and might be worth a new edition?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 9:42pm

Re: Re: Re: Take your anti business blog and go to a piracy haven country
"of what's out there sitting in corporate vaults unseen for decades."

Assuming these corporations even store these books.

Which is a good point. Why should the public leave it up to corporations to store the works of our cultural heritage and the fruits of the public's unowed monopoly for long enough to eventually make it into the public domain? Why should some corporation get to decide if it wants to store such works long enough and then maybe it'll release them to the public, if it wants, if they ever become public domain.

Ridiculous. That shouldn't be their decision. Copy protection should never be allowed to last this long, these works should enter the public domain and they should enter into free and widespread circulation without the need for some corporation to approve of it first.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Apr 2012 @ 10:26pm

From the original postg: "The above chart shows a distribution of 2500 newly printed fiction books selected at random from Amazon's warehouses."

How representative is a random selection of 2,500 books from the millions of books Amazon offers?
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Jeroen Hellingman (profile), 3 Apr 2012 @ 11:19pm

Sourced from Google Books and a scam
Many of those "new" books offered for sale on Amazon are in fact print-on-demand editions based on Google Books scans of pre-1923 editions, without any additional value, and probably a bad deal, even for the low amount asked for it. Better go to the Internet Archive, locate the book there, and download it for free.

All those cheap reprints involve another scam. Google Books will delete books, based on a publisher's claim it is still in print, even if it is Public Domain, so now some unscrupulous "publishers" will republish a book, based on Google's scans, then claim it is in print, and thus have it removed from the freely available books in Google (back to snippet view, or worse, completely eliminated).

Good thing a user "tpb" has copied many of Google's scans to the Internet Archive.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Apr 2012 @ 12:40am

Re: Re:
I'm not sure a corporation can ever be listed as the creator, since it was a human being who created the work. Even in collaborations, isn't it the names of all creators that are listed?
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Apr 2012 @ 12:51am

I do wonder how digital distribution will tie into this; it makes distribution essentially free, so the value of a commercial monopoly would be retained much, much longer.
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PaulT (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 1:34am

Re: Re: Re:
My opinion is that copyrights should be in 15-20 year chunks, renewable by the author (not a corporation) until the author's death. At that point, the copyright transfers to a beneficiary (a family member or the publisher if no family member exists), where it will last until the next scheduled renewal point and then expire.

This would allow people who prefer copyright protections to retain them, it would eliminate the problems of orphaned works and works remaining unpublished due to profitability concerns, and any problems with determining the length of copyright applicable to a work (renewals would be publicly recorded and easy to work out). It would also eliminate the problems currently seen with allowing corporations to swallow up copyrights and retain them ad infinitum, only allowing those works they wish to be seen to be published.

"What about works credited to more and one person"

I would suggest that contracts can be drawn up in such circumstances, with the above being applicable up to the death of the last surviving author. My stipulation would be that copyrights cannot be renewed by a non-living person (i.e. a corporation), nor transferred to somebody else one they have been granted. Given these criteria, the rest would be up to the author(s).
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PaulT (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 1:42am

Re:
"The reason for the fewer titles in the 20th century has little to do with copyright and more to do with popularity."

So, books from 1910 are insanely popular but nobody wants to read books from 1930? That's your argument? Really?

Perhaps if they're more popular it's because *they've been published recently*. It's impossible for something to be popular if it's not available to buy! How that's still something you can't comprehend is beyond me, yet here you are advocating blocking the publication of books like you advocate stopping people from buying music and movies. Then you get surprised when they don't sell...
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Mesonoxian Eve (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 3:42am

I'd like to point out the graph also shows a very staggering drop off after the copyright revision of 1909, which basically took everything and put it into copyright. This was the year the 28 year extension was allowed.

All because our government, back then, was also duped into believing this was "needed to protect the artists".

Some things never change and, because we didn't learn from it, history has repeated itself.

Oh, and it will again. Just watch. That pesky mouse is about to enter the "public domain" again.
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Niall (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 4:55am

Re:
Since you are including all of J.R.R Tolkien's works inside that bracket, and excluding Harry Potter, I have to wonder if you are under 25 or just without taste?
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Niall (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 5:13am

Re:
The same as how a 'representative' sample of 1000 people will be extrapolated over a nation during an opinion poll?
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PaulT (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 5:28am

Re: Re:
I'd settle for astoundingly ignorant, as per usual. Unless the original comment was meant as sarcasm, in which case well done to the AC.
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Larry L. Edwards, 4 Apr 2012 @ 6:29am

How can copyright terms be to long?
Is everyone becoming a copyist? A copyright owner has supposedly created an original work; it's his baby and he ought be able to treat and care for it just like it was his child and claim ownership forever and beyond. A person looking to make a quick dollar and just hustle off another's labor is the lowest slime and should not be permitted to participate in civilized society.
The person who lack creative ability should not be in the pursuit of someone else property unless a royalty check is cut that respect the time and effort of the genius of the copyright owner.
Why prey on the accomplishments of another? If one cannot create his own works; evidently he's pursuing the wrong field of endeavor. Perhaps the field of service, sales, supply or some other area is his natural calling and where they may find their success.
My copyrighted materials are MINE! I worked and created them for the pleasure of myself, my children, grandchildren and even beyond. It is what it is.
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rltomkinson (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 7:56am

Re: Re:
Disney was a lot of the reason the laws in the US were changed. They didn't anyone to be able to use images of Steamboat Willy without their consent. If I remember correctly, this all came about just before Steamboat Willy's copyright was about to expire.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 4 Apr 2012 @ 8:20am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Take your anti business blog and go to a piracy haven country
And then there are content companies that go out of business before the copyrights expire.

Maybe the copyrights will be bought by another company? Maybe that other company will take care to go through all the holdings to see what they own? Maybe the copyrights will change hands so many times that nobody knows who the real owner is? Maybe the content will languish with no owner at all? Maybe anybody who knew anything about it is dead?

And yet the content sits there, inaccessible, locked away by copyright law for years and years.
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Chargone (profile), 8 Apr 2012 @ 5:17am

Re: Re:
depressingly often when the circles in question actually include those with the capacity to take meaningful action on the matter at hand, the latter.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2012 @ 6:03am

Re: How can copyright terms be to long?
and as long as you keep it within your family and don't publish it, it can remain yours and your children's and your grandchildren's yeah even unto the seventh generation. No one is stopping you.
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mp, 12 Jun 2012 @ 9:25pm

Re:
We should just grab hand grenaids and destroy mpaa headcorters. The Womens suffrerage movement nearly died before they went Spartacus and broke windows and almost murdered people. Violence shoulden't be the answer, too bad that it almost always is.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2012 @ 3:11pm

Re: Re:
While I agree that copyright law today is insane, killing people over it is the only thing even more insane.

In short, fuck you
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S.Loree, 23 Aug 2012 @ 5:25am

Re:
I am a writer, and I strongly believe in copyright. I also love Public Domain. I believe almost all creative people believe that copyright equal to life of creator plus 50 years should be sufficient. I do know, however,that I want to keep my works in my family.If there was a happy medium, like my family keeps the rights to the works I have created but grants public use after a certain amount of time.. I dont know. I understand both sides of the coin. Maybe we should be asked upon filing for copyright status if we want our work released to public domain, 50, 75 or 100 years after our deaths... It would be an alternative
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Vivian, 23 Nov 2017 @ 7:52am

Page layout sucks
Good article, but your page layout sucks. The article is all but unreadable because the central section has been clipped by an inch or so, so the end of each line is missing.
I had to select all the text and copy / paste it into a text file so I could read it. I have tried chrome and internet explorer. both have the smee problem with this page.
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