1. https://www.informit.com/promotions/art-of-computer-programm...
Ie if I were to sell TAOCP after the copyright expired, can I sell it at a price above the costs of printing, distribution, etc? Because any profit would be rent-seeking.
“Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth without creating new wealth by manipulating the social or political environment.”
Describes copyright abolishment quite aptly.
You have created value by stealing someone else’s wealth.
If bottled water companies were selling my water or my ideas without paying me, that would also be theft.
https://drewdevault.com/2021/12/23/Sustainable-creativity-po...
From your blog:
> Assume that we address both of these problems: we create an empathetic system which never denies a human being of their fundamental right to live, and we eliminate copyright.
So basically you advise solving world hunger and resource scarcity as necessary to avoid the need for copyright. That is literally impossible, there will always be someone who wants more than they have, who feels what a socialism-based society believes is sufficient is really not, and who are we as a society to judge the perceived needs of each individual? No thanks, I’ll take capitalism any day.
Yes, it is possible.
Second, if the book lost copyright protection wouldn’t Donald, losing that revenue stream, then be motivated to replace it by writing a follow up book?
Artists should be able to benefit from their works, but your question implies (to me) that because a work is popular artists have a right to continue to profit. You ask if they should be “forced” to “give up their copyright”. I think it’s good to keep in mind that anything copyrighted is being withheld from society at large; that we collectively pay a tax to authors in the form of giving up our collective right to remix and recombine works and profit from them in turn.
Particularly in the modern world of effortless free duplication and distribution, that’s a heavy burden to pay and it makes no sense to me that we would collectively agree to pay it for many decades even after the original author is dead.
This would pale in comparison to the status quo. There’s just too many people who don’t pay to support free things. Just look at how open source projects often struggle to find funding, or relicense to non-open licenses. Or how often the open source project isn’t the persons full time job.
> Second, if the book lost copyright protection wouldn’t Donald, losing that revenue stream, then be motivated to replace it by writing a follow up book?
I can’t speak to anyone else’s motivations but my own, but for me, no, I wouldn’t even bother writing the first book.
> that because a work is popular artists have a right to continue to profit.
Authors like Knuth should benefit from the wealth they helped others created. TAOCP provides a wealth of knowledge the reader can use to improve the quality of their work product. This is still a benefit long past a few decades.
> I think it’s good to keep in mind that anything copyrighted is being withheld from society at large;
It was not societies property in the first place.
Given Knuth's prolific bibliography, he has other revenue streams from more recent publications (including more recently published volumes). His name remains on the cover of the work, so he still gets social benefits from having written a deeply influential book (which will be even more accessible once freed of copyright!).
I also don't see how $60 for a single volume seems reasonable -- most books aren't that expensive and this price point constitutes a big barrier to entry.