The number of laws passed to stifle the Internet are more than could be listed in a short article such as this one, but I am sure most of you have heard of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), The Patriot Act, and even that new U.S. Copyright Act labeled variously as The Sonny Bono, or The Mickey Mouse Copyright Act.
The only thing preventing these various laws, and others, from totally stifling the Internet is the varying natures of the widely different networks that make up the Internet-- it's just about impossible to effectively police networks in well over 125 languages in nearly twice as many places around the world. Don't believe me? Google, alone, will provide information in 130 languages; Project Gutenberg's Consortia Center in over 100 languages, and 50 languages at Project Gutenberg's original site, this very week.
However, if "ye olde boye networke" has its way, as their way has been in the past, The Fifth Information Age could likely be curtailed as effectively as the first four of a history of potential Information Ages.
Will this Information Age byte the dust as they have?
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In Conclusion
In 1900 perhaps 50% of all copyrights ever issued expired by the turn of the century, leaving the public domain and copyright well balanced. With the average copyright a period of about 30 years, the average person would live long enough to republish any books they had read in the first half of their lives.
This provided for continuity between past and future that did not depend on "ye olde boye network" for permission.
ANYONE could republish what they read early in life, with their own personal commentaries on how things had changed in the period since they first read those books.
When I was in grade school we studied slavery, and movies such as "Gone With The Wind" and "Song Of The South" were the required mandatory viewing of everyone in the school.
The copyright on "Gone With The Wind" was issued in 1939, so the longest it could have been kept under copyright up until a 1976 rewrite of U.S. copyright law would have been through the end of the 56th year, or 1995.
Thus I should have been able to fully demonstrate what my schooling required 50 years ago, and how things changed a great deal in the treatment of the subject of slavery for modern school studies.
Disney's "Song Of The South" has copyrights back from 2006 to 1944 according to various sources, but the movie I refer to above was apparently copyrighted in 1946, thus the 56 year copyright should have expired 2003.
However, due to the various extensions and other misusage of the copyright laws and their multiple extensions, I am not able to even FIND a copy of "Song Of The South", as this is no longer considered "politically correct" from Disney Corporation's point of view, so they have censored it out of the public eye.
The current expiration date for the copyright on "Gone With The Wind" is the year 2041, and 2048 for "Song Of The South," according to a few sources I researched, but those both seem a few years too long for what I understand is the current 95 years.
I would have said 2035 and 2042, respectively.
However, the point remains the same!
No one can expect to live long enough to republish what a person might have seen or read even in grade school.
The continuity of our history has become a discontinuity.
Only corporations can expect to "live" long enough for an untrammeled republication of anything that is copyrighted under our current copyright laws.
As I said in the opening paragraph of this conclusion:
In 1900 perhaps 50% of all copyrights ever issued expired by the turn of the century, leaving the public domain and copyright well balanced, and with the average copyright a period of about 30 years, the average person would have a long enough lifespan to plan to republish any books their lives included in the first half.
In 2100 about 99% of all copyrights ever issued should be expected to still be in force, leaving just 1% to the now threatened public domain, bordering on extinction.
Let's say you took your five-year-old child to see latest newly copyrighted movies.
Under the current copyright law, that child would have to live a couple years past 2100 before they could republish whatever it was they saw.
Not even those with the longest life expectancies in the wide world can legitimately have such expectations as to live long enough to republish under such a strict copyright.
Thus the only commentaries we will hear that include that original movie, presuming it will be found (unlike Disney and "The Song Of The South"), will be the voices of ye olde boye networke. . .voices that have made every effort over the last 550 years to stifle the printing revolution started by Herr Gutenberg before Columbus was even born.
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Footnotes:
I would be remiss in this article that describes the Five Information Ages if I did not add in some prices, and the results of various revolutions in publishing technologies in terms of information affordable by the masses.
Most recently, in my own lifetime, I have see the average price for a paperback go through hyperinflationary spiral figures from 25 cents to $8, from 1955 to 2005.
Just think what the news media would be saying if gallons of gasoline had followed the same pricing, $8 a gallon!!!
I receive messages from publishers as famous as the top of Encyclopedia Britannica, constantly informing me of price hikes in paper, binding, shipping, storage and royalties. But the truth is, that the blank books I use for journals haven't changed price at all since I bought my first ones back in the 1960's, even with a vastly improved quality of binding that now includes a variety of cloth covers, with a choice of lined or unlined paper and two to three times as many pages at the same price for 396 pages today as we paid for 160 pages in a cardboard binding in the 1960's.
Each and every time these false statements are presented, my response is to personally go to the bookstore and buy, not just look at, these products available today so I can tell you about them.
Recently the prices for the blank hardback books dropped, perhaps only temporarily, but the last purchase I made from that shelf was 25% less than the price I paid previously, significantly less than I had ever paid before, and for a better quality binding and more pages, as mentioned.
Something is definitely wrong with the arguments made for prices going up for the raw materials and shipping, if it is a price NOT going up for blank books that require that same paper, binding, shipping, warehousing etc.
When I mentioned this to one of those using that logic, I was reminded that the "real" books paid for advertising—placement—etc., but then my research showed that ye olde "Nothing Book" also paid for placement and ads, though it would appear new ones only pay for placement, as I didn't see any advertising, but did notice placement. Perhaps a possible reason the price fell during my research.
In addition, I usually price the Perry Mason mysteries we saw above, and a few other similar paperbacks, to compare with those I have stashed away from my youth, so I do NOT have to rely completely on the statistics from Bowker and others when they are pooh poohed by those who should deny that Bowker knows anything about book pricing.
Then I challenge our current readers to go up into attics all over the world and bring down boxes of books from their parents' collections to compare even more prices.
James Bond paperbacks were all once 50 cents, as the price in the 1960's had already started doubling from the price in the 1950's, but look at the prices below that I called Borders this very moment to confirm:
Here are some samples I just got from the mystery shelf:
Perry Mason, The Case of the Deadly Toy, $6.99
Ian Fleming, Dr. No, Trade Paperback Only $13
Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love, Trade Paperback Only $14
(All of the James Bond titles were $13-$14)
Jessica Fletcher, Question of Murder, $6.99
(All the Murder She Wrote books were $6.99)
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were Non
e, $6.99
(All the Agatha Christie books were $5.99 or $6.99)
I don't know exactly how many books there are in each set, or how many such classics are ONLY available in the larger and more expensive trade editions so I made another call—specifically designed to find out those differences.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged in the larger trade paperback, $20
Atlas Shrugged in the smaller mass paperback, $9
The Fountainhead in the smaller mass paperback, $9
The Fountainhead in the larger trade paperback $20
Interesting that The Fountainhead used to be less, because it was only 70% as long, but now the prices are the same.
The price ranges here probably include the vast majority of all paperbacks in print, as the largest is 1,000+ pages and the smallest is hardly 200.
It is also interesting that it appears many of the classic paperbacks are no longer available in their original, quite reasonably priced mass market editions, but only in a trade paperback edition that is twice as expensive.
However, not even including the trade paperbacks at double the price of the mass market paperbacks, it would appear a price average of $8 is still a quite reasonable guess, and is 40 times the price of the average paperback in 1955.
By the way, when you look up the 1955 prices, don't forget that THAT price of 15 cents you may find is WHOLESALE, and the retail price was 25 cents.
40% markup is very common in the publishing industry.
As for those who say that increased royalties are a reason for increased prices, the average royalty for all the authors I have interviewed still remains at about 5%, though I can send you reports that say J.K. Rowling gets 8%.
In conclusion, it would appear that the main result of copyright extension has been to allow the benefits of printer revolutions to be monopolized by the publishing industries and thus kept from being passed on to the public.
Obviously using computers to type, lay out, spellcheck and edit books, as well as to prepare the galleys, allows saving upon saving to the publishing industry, savings that could have been passed on.
Every publisher I have interviewed, all up and down chains of command from authors to the top brass, have each denied that ANY of the 40 times as much as you pay for paperbacks today goes into their pockets.
Exxon just paid their CEO a billion dollars, half of those dollars in severance pay, so we know where their money was going and they make no attempt at denial.
So why the big denial in the publishing industry?
Hollywood makes a joke out of the fact that movies make no money on paper, so they don't have to pay off royalties to those who own a percentage after "break even."
The publishing industry reacts quite strongly when I ask a simple question about how their bookkeeping compares.
Nevertheless, the real question to ask when the book price goes from 25 cents to $8 for the same edition, while other prices get so much coverage for going from the same prices to $3. . .is. . ."Where Is The Money Going??? And Why???"
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Universe Vol1Num2 Page 64