Here is an example of what I write about frequently, copyright renewals that doom a book to obscurity, books that hardly anyone cares about for which the rights owner is not obvious but desperately need to be put online. The case in point is Methodology of the Social Sciences by Felix Kauffman, a member of the Mises Circle (the guy who wrote all the songs too). It was published in German in 1936 and English in 1944. Some family member renewed in 1971, thereby dooming it to an early grave. Fortunately, Amazon carries one copy. After that is gone, who knows what happens? What precisely do people think they are protecting when they do these renewals? Keeping the vandals away from precious family relics? Who knows. And yes, I would be happy to send an email to the owners to ask for permission — will they ask for money? — but this hump alone is enough to keep classics offline for decades.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/10486/curses-on-copyright/
Curses on Copyright
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“What precisely do people think they are protecting when they do these renewals?”
Income? A little trickle of royalty checks might make a difference for, say, and old woman whose author husband has died.
Have you considered putting Alexander Gray’s “The Development of Economic Doctrine” and “The Socialist Tradition” online? How about Elie Halévy’s “The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism”? None of the three seems to have an entry on that web site.
Keep up the good work, by the way.
“Currently unavailable.
We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.”
And……. there we go. Poof.
I’m assuming some LvMI reader bought it and will scan it and make it into a pdf?
That’s the point. Legally, you can’t post this. Now, under the copyright law, not just anyone can complain about posting. you have to be the owner and have standing. These nice people who renewed might live anywhere and probably wouldn’t care or probably would never know. for all I knew, the heirs don’t even know that they are the owners. So it could be posted safely, most likely. but strictly under the law, it is not permitted.
The paradox is that the copyright on out of print books _keeps_ books out of print, and doesn’t bring any property return to the copyright owner.
It blocks the exchange of the costlessly replicable encoding of thoughts, and doesn’t provide an incentive for any wealth producing activity or exchange of any kind.
Gray is clean. Stay tuned.
“It blocks the exchange of the costlessly replicable encoding of thoughts, and doesn’t provide an incentive for any wealth producing activity or exchange of any kind.”
With respect, according to Boldrin and Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly which is the best case by case study on copyrights and patents, that is not correct.
Horst Muhlmann wrote:
“After that one used copy that is available sells, I’m sure that little old lady is going to run off to the Caymans with her zero dollars in royalties.”
I would assume that when the copyright was renewed in 1971, the renewer didn’t take Amazon.com and PDF files on mises.org into consideration. Just a guess.
If you do a Google search, there are still a few online stores that have some used copied available. I was debating purchasing one, but decided against it. I know that’s not the point of this post (there will always be used copies floating around), but if anybody is interested in the book you can still find it.
“old woman whose author husband has died.”
Do I alone think this in odds with this?
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
scineram wrote:
“Do I alone think this in odds with this?
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
Are you opposed to ordinary property being inherited by the heirs of the original owners? If not, and if IP rights are morally equivalent to ordinary property rights (I’m not saying that they are), then it follows that heirs should be able to inherit IP rights as well.
You don’t get it.
I’m assuming some LvMI reader bought it and will scan it and make it into a pdf?
I was planning to do just that (and post the PDF somewhere unrelated to Mises.org)…
RWW: “I was planning to do just that (and post the PDF somewhere unrelated to Mises.org)…”
Yes, post it on The Underground IP Railroad! A new network of IP abolitionists helping to free orphaned books chained by the shackles of copyright!
Psychologically speaking here’s a paradigm.
A book sells more or less well for some time and meets a relatively high time preference on the market thus…
Then it stops selling or slows down very much as it goes “out of fashion”.
The pressure thus for an author to sell it immediately with a high profit in a world without copyright would be it seems tremendously higher than now.
This would speak against the publication of ideas that have a low time preference in society, wouldn’t it?
Oh~! Someone bought the last copy on Amazon.
Artisan,
How can a book (an inanimate object) have a time preference?? Time preference is a property associated with an actor. Books, rocks, trees, etc don’t exhibit time preference.
Stephan,
“Underground IP Railroad” is already alive and well (see BitTorrent, eMule, etc)
Brian, isn’t eMule shut down?
Vanmind,
I ‘eMuled’ something yesterday. Had not heard about it shutting down.
Yes, post it on The Underground IP Railroad!
In case there was confusion, I didn’t mean my comment to imply that I was the one who had purchased the book.
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