[mapgrep]

Thanks for the pointer! I think you're right that The Atlantic piece is more fair.

On the "adjusted" chart you reference, my thought was the adjustment makes that chart not hugely useful to the copyright debate. In other words, the debate has one side people who say "copyright encourages creative output" and on the other people who say "copyright actually limits the spread of creative output." By showing books available as a percentage of total books published, rather than showing absolute output, the adjusted chart is useless for the question "might strong copyright encourage greater output," instead measuring only the answer to the question "does copyright tend to limit distribution." Both sides in the debate agree the answer to the latter question is "yes." They do disagree on the scope of the problem so I suppose the adjusted chart addresses that point but it seems like a minor and muddled bit of data. You look at it and might think "ah copyright is really holding down the distribution of media" but when you realize it's basically a percentage chart (based on a small and not necessarily representative sample) and then realize book output has hugely grown it's hard to see the differences in the chart as particularly consequential for the debate. At least IMHO.

I would like to see that same chart adjusted for population growth.

[Retric]

It's a lot cheaper to write and print a book now than in the 1800's, the population is much larger, and autors are often far more prolific. So, really your better off looking at the years before and after copywrite law changed vs the overall trend.