Physical books and digital content is special in that you can mostly archive their content almost permanently for cheap. Buildings, paintings, idols, living things, natural features of the environment ... not so much.

So the solution is:

- mandatory copyright registration and renewal with links to where the work can be acquired

- a blanket carve out for any non-commercial trust-style org so that they can scan books etc and keep the data on their servers. They should be able to issue digital membership cards for a fee so that patrons can access the archives. Any work that is "live" based on the registration database will be locked. All "dead" material can be shared with members.

In this way, a hundred digital preservation societies can bloom.

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skeledrew 17 hours ago | parent [-]

> copyright

This is what caused the problem in the first place. If people had unrestricted access to content then the world would be a better place. And works wouldn't be so rare that it's worth AI companies buying and destroying them to gain some edge, as well as remain in legal compliance.

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sieve 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I completely agree. IPR as a concept is suspect. But it is the world we live in, with timelines extending like crazy. There are works produced before I was born that will remain under protection till long after I am dead.

A targeted modification to the laws could produce most of the benefits for a minor cost.

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theshrike79 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Copyright should be globally determined so that if I cant pay fair market value for a piece of content, it's deemed out of copyright protection and I can use whatever means to get it digitally.

Like if a game isn't available for sale anywhere in my region, I can get it without breaking any laws. A book is out of print and I can't pay money for it digitally -> free game.

(Why "fair market value?": So that skeezy publishers don't have an online shop with one physical copy of every book they own for $1Trillion just to fulfill the law)

	▲	skeledrew 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Copyright should be banished out of existence so information, which is a trivially reproduced intangible, can be freely copied and distributed anywhere it can be useful. Instead of having the crap like what happened with the Internet Archive during/after Covid. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/internet-archive-loses-...