Matt Yglesias points out that the most important thing we need to do to address the problem of the classics becoming inaccessible involves fixing copyright law:
All the ‘sphere’s a twitter about some libraries dumping little-read classics in favor of more high-demand contemporary bestsellers. Julian’s post on this, however, inspired me to remark that far and away the most important thing for the preservation of the classics has nothing to do with library policies and everything to do with intellectual property policy.
In a world where classic works enter the public domain, people will get them one way or another. They’ll be available for free download on the internet. E-book technology will improve. Print copies will cheaply available to people who want to buy them. Whether or not these things are in local libraries sort of won’t be a huge deal one way or another. Now, traditionally, copyrights have had limited durations and “classic” books, being old by definition, tend to be in the public domain and hence widely available. In a digital era, they’ll be super-available. But the emerging trend of the digital era is for retroactive extensions of copyright terms meaning that nothing new will ever enter the public domain. Ever.
Quite so. The vast majority of books from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on are currently sitting on dusty library shelves, hardly ever looked at by anyone. We now have the technology to digitize all those books and turn them into a veritable treasure trove of easily-searchable information about decades gone by. Yet in order to ensure that Disney continues to turn a profit on Mickey Mouse, making those hundreds of thousands of commercially worthless works available to the general public is effectively illegal. In effect, 80 years of 20th century culture is in danger of being locked up so that a small number of copyright holders can profit from the miniscule fraction of works from the 1920s that still have commercial value. It’s really quite a shame.
And don’t get me started on the way that copyright law is hampering film preservation.
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