Also, copyright was created to foster communication. However, these days it is often used to hinder communication. Media companies and publishers sit on large catalogues that they refuse to (re)publish.
Anecdote: My mother is/was a huge fan of a rather popular U.S. TV show that ran many seasons. It's disappeared from cable reruns, and the studio has refused to issue DVD's. So, my mother can no longer watch that show. (She, and many others, have been waiting patiently for the DVD's for some years.)
Some argue that copyright should not be a means of removing previously publicly, if commercially, available content from public discourse.
In this specific case, I would suggest stripping the rights holder of the copyright and placing the show into the public domain. Publish, for reasonable compensation, or lose the monopoly.
That's what copyright is, a monopoly. Granted by society -- the public, in the U.S. And subject to limitations that public may impose.
I'd suggest the public is increasingly in mind or reining in the ever more extreme monopoly rights that politicians have been corruptly passing in their name.
Anecdote: My mother is/was a huge fan of a rather popular U.S. TV show that ran many seasons. It's disappeared from cable reruns, and the studio has refused to issue DVD's. So, my mother can no longer watch that show. (She, and many others, have been waiting patiently for the DVD's for some years.)
Some argue that copyright should not be a means of removing previously publicly, if commercially, available content from public discourse.
In this specific case, I would suggest stripping the rights holder of the copyright and placing the show into the public domain. Publish, for reasonable compensation, or lose the monopoly.
That's what copyright is, a monopoly. Granted by society -- the public, in the U.S. And subject to limitations that public may impose.
I'd suggest the public is increasingly in mind or reining in the ever more extreme monopoly rights that politicians have been corruptly passing in their name.