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Out of print -> Public Domain | |||||||||||||||||
I hate out of print or hard to find things. What if the copyright on a piece of intellectual property expired if it was out of print (or otherwise not republished) for a long period of time, say ten or fifteen years. Publishers and copyright holders would need to periodically choose between the cost of printing a new run of books or albums versus letting unprofitable copyrights slide.
C2H6O, Aug 14 2006
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Good idea, but probably too easy to circumvent.
What is the minimum quantity that must be printed each year for it to remain legally "in print"? A publisher could just print 10 copies (on a computer printer), offer them for a very high price, and then legally claim it was still "in print".
That would be easy to legislate, and not a good idea based on current law. Publishers pay taxes on their inventory, which is why things become unavailable; it's cheaper to take the loss up front on pulping books than to pay the continual taxes, based on the asking price. In terms of legislating it, just put a provision in the same bill that makes this change, something like "At least 50 copies of a work must be sold in a year for the work to be considered 'in print.'"