Copyright doesn’t encourage new works. If anything, copyright discourages new works by locking fair use and transformative behind an expensive legal process. Digitization in America is illegal by default except for books where a judge ruled it’s transformative enough.
The proven method to encourage new works is to have no copyright. But alas, publishers back then didn’t appreciate that others print “their” books. Higher quality cover? More durable paper? Book is out of print? Zero profits? Give me money or fuck off. Publishers sure didn’t change.
Yeah nothing says “write a book” like all revenue going to whichever corporation bootlegs it on the fanciest paper.
Yeah sure let’s ignore out of print books that nobody will ever see again unless you pirate it.
The explicit, stated purpose of copyright was to encourage sharing of ideas. When it lasted originally 14 years, it worked. Before that, you might have had a great idea and kept it to yourself because why take years of your life researching a subject and writing a book when a publisher’s going to immediately copy it and pay you nothing? 14 years is plenty of time to get a return on your investment and most importantly, after that, it didn’t belong to you anymore. It belonged to everyone.
For example, that would mean District 9 and Hunger Games would be in the public domain right now.
