Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria

This is an important article on copyright as it ties together so many different but related issues: orphan works, Google's scanning of 25 million books that no one yet has access to, Google's spat with the Authors Guild, DOJ antitrust issues, antiquated copyright law, the problem of European copyright influencing US copyright which has led to increased copyright duration and much, much more.

I would recommend that anyone who has even the slightest interest in copyright should read it. Here are a few quotes:

"It certainly seems unlikely that someone is going to spend political capital—especially today—trying to change the licensing regime for books, let alone old ones. “ “It’s not going to get anyone elected. It’s not going to create a whole bunch of jobs.”

"The first copyright statute in the United States, passed in 1790, was called An Act for the Encouragement of Learning. Copyright terms were to last fourteen years, with the option to renew for another fourteen, but only if the author was alive at the end of the first term."

"The greatest tragedy is we are still exactly where we were on the orphan works question. That stuff is just sitting out there gathering dust and decaying in physical libraries, and with very limited exceptions,” Mtima said, “nobody can use them. So everybody has lost and no one has won.”

I recall a short while ago Cory Doctorow making the point that copyright isn't a man-in-the-street issue in that the average person just isn't grabbed by the subject, which is why publishers win the copyright wars so handsomely—that is that there is no effective opposition to fight them. This, in my opinion, is a very unfortunate situation. Note the support for Doctorow's point of view in the quote above, i.e.: "...not important enough for the Congress to somehow adjust copyright law,..."