Someone who knows a lot more than I do about making money raises an issue:
I can whip up a mean steak, but I still like to go to restaurants. Because I enjoy it. I enjoy getting out of the house with family, friends, who ever.
Every single Mavs game is on TV. It wasnt that long ago that some people in the sports business thought that having games on TV would reduce attendance. After all, why go to the game when you can watch it for free on TV ? Then someone decided to do some research and as it turns out, the more games you broadcast on TV, the more people who go to your games.
Isn’t it interesting how copyright holders so often shoot themselves in the foot in “protection” of what they assume to be their interests? It’s particularly interesting in light of Baen Books’ experience, which proved that giving out free text versions of its authors’ older books actually increased their sales.
Since bookstores increasingly carry a smaller number of titles and keep them on the shelves for a shorter period of time, the conventional book-selling model is becoming less and less beneficial to copyright holders. Increasing it from life plus 70 years to infinity isn’t going to put a single additional dollar into the pockets of the creators, so my guess is that it will not be too long before it is conclusively proven that the benefit of copyright to the creator is as nebulous as the once-credited benefit of public stadiums to the taxpayers.
The text is not the whole of the book experience, just as a meal is not the whole of the restaurant experience. Defenders of copyright are in the position of needing to explain the existence of restaurants, since according to their theory, the easy availability of better, cheaper food at home should all but eliminate any demand for eating out.