May 21, 2007
Booksellers that publish their own titles benefit not from escaping the author’s copyright, but the previous publisher’s exercise of a grant of rights (limited, authors take note, to 35 years). “Freeing” a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, “The Garden Party,” while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.
Mark Helprin fails to take into account that the web allows uniform access to the public domain to anybody with internet access. (“A great idea lives forever. Shouldn’t its copyright?”)

Comments gratefully appreciated. Please send them to me by any method of your choice and I'll include them here.

archive
projects
writings
videos
subscribe
Mastodon
RSS (?)
twtxt (?)
Station (?)