Interesting analysis of copyright effect on book investment.
TL;DR:
These results suggest that, at least for older, culturally valuable works with low fixed and marginal costs of production and distribution, underinvestment may flow from the existence of copyright rights, rather than from their absence.
Copyright is a crutch not only for the people for businesses too.
This is great news and aligns pretty well with libre cultures ideas, funnily enough. It gives reassurance that we’ve got the right idea. I mean, I’ve always known that we were on the right track, due to how amazingly copyleft strategies have worked for us despite people gracefully pretending copyleft doesn’t exist, but it’s one more piece of evidence that copyright law, as it currently stands, locks culture away and makes it inaccessible. I mean, if you could own the copyright or the patents to as many ideas as possible, as vague as they may be, you could theoretically control creativity and thought itself, which is something that should never happen.