[dalbasal]

This needs to change, big time.

There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake. Not only are creators of valuable works is usually pretty distant from direct ownership anyway, there's no possible way for them to profit directly from this work. The only way a spotify-like deal works is because copyright ownership is conglomerated.

IMO, public (especially free-as-in-beer) access to newspaper archives could be pretty liberally justified on fair use grounds.

[thaumasiotes]

> There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake.

We're not imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to preserve their cash value. We're imposing publishing restrictions on past works in order to stop them from competing with present works. It keeps the cash value of present works up.

[zozbot234]

That makes even less sense, though. Yesterday's news does not really compete with today's news, they're effectively in separate markets.

[thaumasiotes]

So? Yesterday's books, movies, and music compete with today's books, movies, and music. Nobody cares about the news one way or the other. So the news gets treated just like everything else.

[bnj]

There are virtually unlimited quantities of free to consume media - TV, Books, Movies. People don't pay more money for new creations because the older works aren't published or available.

Relaxing copyright restrictions after a more reasonable period (seven years) doesn't take value away from new work, it enriches the public commons in a way that encourages the creation of new culture.

A tiny portion of cultural works remain profitable after the first few years. Grant seven years of copyright automatically, and let creators purchase extensions in five year blocks that increase in price. $100 for five additional years, $1000 for five years after that, $10000 for five more, $100000 for five more. It makes no sense to barricade all cultural works behind a copyright wall to protect the tiny slice of properties that continue to pay dividends after a generation.

[dalbasal]

Well... the fair use case and/or the public good case are pretty strong for news.

[dredmorbius]

This.

Even if the works are not economically valuable, people's attention is, as is gatekeeping control over archives (allowing one to set narratives and agendas and control context).

The time I spend going through an archive (I immediately hit the 3-article registration wall at the BLNA, so ... little time) is time I'm not spending consuming the present-moment adverts-laden infotainment stream.

[JackFr]

> There is almost no cash value to an article one day later, yet we completely impoverish the public domain for its sake.

If there is no value to an article one day later, it’s literally impossible that restricting it impoverishes anyone.

Copyright law is messed up, but demanding access to something by asserting it’s worthless makes no sense.

[Banana699]

>If there is no value to an article one day later, it’s literally impossible that restricting it impoverishes anyone.

You have mistakenly generalized "cash value" to "value" without reason. I find a ton of value reading old media, because it allows one to "play the historian", you get a unique and magical ability to experience an era just like its natives have done, except not with their outlook on life or assumptions. It's the closest you can get to traveling to a far foreign country.

This is value, but not cash value. Releasing this media impoverishes no one (in terms of cash value) but massively impoverishes people like me (in the sense of value).

>Copyright law is messed up,

10^grahams_number amen to that, it's bloody ridiculous to withhold something decades after its creator died and their family is now in the 5th generation and probably don't know the thing ever existed.

Copyrights, patents and intellectual property are a blight upon the earth, a massive bug in civilization's conception of ideas and knowledge that no one is willing to report.

[bryanrasmussen]

>This is value, but not cash value.

I agree that then copyright on the news should expire a lot sooner, but really if people (as a general category) find value in something they (as a general rule) will pay some amount to have it. It may not be a great amount, and you may not be one of the people who will pay for it despite valuing it (many people who value music won't pay for it, but there are obviously people who do value it and will pay).

I am not arguing that there should be copyright on this media just that what the parent commenter said is correct, you can't claim that it holds some form of value without also admitting that someone will pay (another form of value) for it.

In point of fact now that I think of it I have some old hardbound police gazette collections that are republished sometime in the last 20 years from 100+ years ago. I paid for those.

[Retric]

Economically numbers close enough to zero are zero. Basically every method of value extraction has overhead so something can both be valued and have no economic value.

[WalterBright]

> every method of value extraction has overhead so something can both be valued and have no economic value

Right. Which is why I don't bother selling on ebay or amazon, it isn't worth the time, postage, or trip to the post office. It just goes to the thrift store, as they have a business model that enables them to eke out a profit on such items.

[bryanrasmussen]

yet books that compile publications from previous centuries are published and bought but evidently the ledgers are not debited or credited for the parties to these transactions. Basically if a method of value extraction has so much overhead that it has no economic value I would expect that method to disappear, thus when methods of value extraction are still in use I think that someone has managed to derive economic value from that method - perhaps a very paltry economic value in comparison to some of the companies we discuss here quite frequently - but still some value.