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sirodoht

What if we didn't wait for things to enter the public domain but instead they were born right into it?

I have started a book publishing company that publishes new, public domain books only:

https://laniakeabooks.org/

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This is fantastic. I want to know: how do you plan to sustain this? Donations?

In the last 6 months, I have published two books on my "free time" while working a full-time job. It wasn't unsustainable, just a bit more busy. I might even do it again in the next 6 months!

Essentially: it's rare that people want to publish books and dedicate them to the public domain. People who write a lot are writers who make a living from writing and they write on Substack, for newspapers, large publishing houses, et al. They are not interested in dedicating words to the public domain. Thusly, Laniakea Books is not an unsustainable operation :)

Understood, thank you <3

Thank you! This is fantastic. Letters From Prison [1] is incredible. Will take a look at the other books soon.

[1] https://laniakeabooks.org/books/letters-from-prison/

Have you spoken with lawyers about this idea? At least in the United States, that’s not how copyright or public domain works. One does not need to apply for copyright to receive one, and there is no mechanism for renouncing copyright. There is a belief held by some that copyright, like many other rights, can be renounced however that theory has never been tested in court and there are several dissenting opinions from notable IP lawyers.

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register

The MIT No Attribution (MIT-0) license is an OSI-approved license. As I've been told by at least a couple IP lawyers, the situation may be stickier in continental Europe. Most works the US federal government creates are also considered in the public domain so it doesn't seem that controversial a concept in the US.

code under MIT-0 is still copyrighted to its original author - it just authorizes derivative work to be done without explicitly mentioning it (which is different from public domain)

We're getting into pretty meaningless distinctions though. Anyone can take the work, give no credit, and use it however they wish. Which sounds a lot like public domain.

CC0 from Creative Commons does explicitly state "place them as completely as possible in the public domain." It does also acknowledge that it is not always possible to fully do so because of unrelinquishable moral rights and other reasons. https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/

To the original point, it may well make sense to license under MIT-0 or CC0 if they want to place a book in the public domain. The OSI's concerns about CC0 don't really apply to writing as I understand it.

The carve out for US Government work is explicitly stated in the statute. Not only does that not create a precedent for others to create copyright-free works, but if anything it makes the case that exceptions to copyright-by-default have to be explicitly defined in law.

OSI approving something is meaningless from a legal standpoint, it’s just some people on the internet. Even were that not the case, creating a license is not the same as renouncing copyright. Which, again, it isn’t clear that it is possible to do under US copyright law.

Edit: to be clear, MIT-0 doesn’t even attempt to renounce copyright. It merely provides slightly broader rights to holders of a license to the copyrighted work.

OP’s company is based in the UK, so I was curious if the UK had stronger mechanisms for renouncing copyright. According to this source[1], they do not: “Under United Kingdom law, the availability of [copyright] abandonment is far from clear, and statements purporting to abandon copyright may be interpreted as mere revocable licenses.”

(I don’t mean to suggest that OP’s company is doing anything wrong. I assume they’re up to speed on the legal environment and are doing the right things to ensure their works are perpetually available. I just thought this was interesting).

[1] https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

How do authors make a living by giving away all their work for free?

A book in the public domain can be sold, so probably by selling books. Or other jobs. This seems really interesting to me as someone who does not write books full time.

They established early copyright because publishers would just print copies of books and never pay the authors at all. The middlemen aren't going to do it voluntarily, and if they do, they'll be undercut by those that don't.

Authors can sell their own books even if someone else publishes it. Especially if it's published into the public domain.

And someone else can take the content and print it and sell it themselves

Wouldn't that be neat :-)

not if they sell or exclusively license the copyright to someone else.

Which is not the case for books in the public domain.

The last chapter requires an enterprise license.

Hi!

I found a typo, I suspect you meant, enterprise subscription.

How much do you want for that comment?

Someone who spends years perfecting a recipe has no similar protections, yet they've certainly done work. Their options for making money off of it comes from maybe associated works, or a restaurant, or hiding the recipe. Maybe authors will have to read works out loud? Create different types of value in a world where we will have AI generating stories en masse?

The recipe itself isn’t protected by copyright but the rest of a cookbook is. E.g. their writings about the recipe and the photography. Usage of one’s likeness is also subject to protection. E.g. you can’t market a cookbook on Amazon as Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa even if the contents of the book are exactly her recipes. I don’t think it’s a good analogy.

I mean that's exactly my point -- one needs to find other ways to "making a living" from the work done within the framework of laws which may or may not appreciate or have the means to protect ones work.

They're not making a living from that comment, and they are worried that authors will not be able to make a living from their writings.

Taking a big step back, I guess that question is: Do we value people who write enough that we want some full time writers? We can then structure our society accordingly.

There plenty of idle people who can afford to give away their book length writings for free, probably millions in fact.

And some fraction of them do, some fraction add an optional donation prompt, etc...

Books of recipes are copyrightable though. You can use a recipe, but you can't just copy the book and sell it as your own. What you can't copyright is a simple set of instructions, which is what a recipe is.

Not sure where you get the idea that comments can't be copyrighted. As far as I know, if they are original works of authorship in a tangible medium, and you don't agree to waive that right in the terms of service, you own the copyright. In other words, the usual tests of whether something can be copyrighted.

In any case, comparing comments, recipes, and books as though they were the same thing doesn't make sense to me. I'd like to hear the ways in which they are equivalent, and why authors of novels should be stripped of their current right to claim the sole right to make copies of their own work.

> Not sure where you get the idea that comments can't be copyrighted.

Hm? I'm just pointing out that all kinds of content creation occurs and they have different types of value. I absolutely think a comment has value and could be copyrighted. But, for certain types of creation that are "work" do not have equivalent protections. So, are we just trying to protect work?

So, one writes a book to make a living?

You made that comment to make ends meet?

It is only "for free" if it has any value.

This is the gift economy, where reciprocity is just a special (restricted) case of it.

It's either done as a hobby and/or the reputational etc. benefits support their "brand" in their pursuits that they do get paid for.

Authors don't make a living from their work now. I've known many authors and they all do it as a side gig.. to promote their career while making a few extra bucks. None of them were even close to doing it for a living.

If you want to encourage writing you'll need a different system than copyright.

Weird. Every author I'm aware of writes their books for an actual living.

Honest question: how do you feel about paying for editor's work and marketing a new author if then anyone can sell the resulting book?

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