Protection by copyright does not spread books but "disappears" conversely

ByBenjamin Zank

The copyright law is aimed at protecting the author's rights and promoting the development of culture (Article 1 of the copyright law). This philosophy is the same in copyright laws around the world. "Development of culture" also includes making the work more popular, that is to let it go to the hands of many people. However, the amazing research result that "Protection by copyright is obstructing the publication of the book rather than it?" Was announced in the United States. What does it all mean that books will rather not spread due to copyright?

The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/the-hole-in-our-collective-memory-how-copyright-made-mid-century-books-vanish/278209/

How Copyright Makes Books and Music Disappear (and How Secondary Liability Rules Help Resurrect Old Songs) by Paul J. Heald :: SSRN
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290181

Professor Paul J. Heald of the Illinois Institute of Law, as a result of examining the number of books published in the past 200 years in units of ten years, "As a result of the existence of copyright, it does not promote dissemination of books, "We announced the analysis result that it is.

Dr. Heald randomly extracts 2317 titles from the books on Amazon.com, classifies them as one unit for 10 years, and examines the number of titles, thereby obtaining availability / popularization of each book's age We measured the rate. In order to investigate the penetration rate of books by age, it is effective to examine the total number of issuance, but this is extremely difficult. So, instead of measuring the total number of issues, we decided to indirectly measure availability by looking at the number of titles available at Amazon at the moment.

The result is this graph (graph A).


From graph A, you can see that the books available at Amazon are far more than in the 1980s in the 1880s (10 years from 1880 to 1889). And it is also obvious that books in the middle of the 20th century are relatively few and hardly distributed in the market. This graph shows that since the title of the copyright protected since the 1930s has been rapidly decreasing, "Many works disappeared from the market once in a short period of time since publication,Public domainIt comes to the world again after it is attributed to it ". Shockingly, the number of books from the 1930s to the 1980s and the number of old books from the 1800s to the 1850s are about the same. In other words, publishers are not simply publishing copyright-protected books unless they are especially new works,Protection by copyright does not lead to increasing publishing opportunities for booksIt can be said.

However, there is a problem with the simple method "to examine the number of titles of books that can be purchased at Amazon". Because the books attributed to the public domain (PD) are reissued from various publishers, there are cases where the same books are published as several editions (versions), the number of versions is large (old) It's easier to extract than books, it's more problem counted. Therefore, Dr. Heald measured how many types of plates per title in PD books, on average it was 16. However, since this is a distorted figure due to the fact that only a few books have abnormally large numbers of hundreds, Dr. Heald and his research team used statistical methods to calculate the It came out that the standard value was 4. For this reason, Dr. Heald adopts the value of PD's book divided by 4 as the numerical value of graph A, and corrects the influence due to duplication of plates.

This is the graph after correcting the impact of the version (graph B). The numerical value becomes smaller as the age older than graph A is smaller.


However, Dr. Heald says that the facts suggested by the graph are still dramatic.

Certainly, it can be said that relatively many books have been published in the last 10 years. However, the decline after the 20th century is remarkable. If the market has no harm caused by copyright, the graph should have been descending with a smooth slope as it goes back in time from the 2000s to the 1800s. This is because older works lose interest of people and market needs are reduced. Unlike the copyright-free world, the reality is that the number of publications has declined sharply, and as soon as the book becomes PD, it is growing at a stretch.

However, there is a counter-argument that graph B does not accurately reflect the copyright influence because "the same number of books are not published every ten years." But this objection is likely to be broken down easily.

I do not know exactly how many books were published in the past 200 years. However, Dr. Heald and the research group succeeded in approximately calculating the number of books to be published, from a catalog made by interviews with 72,000 libraries worldwide called "WorldCat". I am revising the charts for the numbers.

Here is the corrected graph (Graph C).


In Graph C, the decline since the 1930s is clearer compared with the number of books before the 1920s. Again, you can reconfirm that the influence of copyright is remarkable.

The copyright advocate has been saying this for a long time. "Protecting books with copyright guarantees to make more profits from intellectual property to copyright holders" "Incentives with profits guarantee availability and distribution improvement of books". This claim has succeeded in obtaining approval of many people.

However, Dr. Heald said "The publishing industry seems to be unwilling to sell the book any longer except for years when he first published the book"will do. Dr. Heald's graph suggests the fact that published books disappear from the market in just a few years and will continue to disappear for many years until becoming PD and being released from copyright holders. And Dr. Heald said "The copyright is extinguishing the book from this world. When the copyright disappears the book can reborn again to this world"will do.

The result of Dr. Heald's research literally denies the utopia created by the copyright advocated by copyright advocates. Protection by copyright continues after the author's death (in principle, 70 years after the author's death in principle, in principle 50 years in Japan). "Reality" that the work is being erased from the market owing to copyright should not be the world that the author wants or wanted.