Countries with longer copyright terms have access to fewer books (pay attention, Canada!) / Boing Boing

"Rebecca Giblin (previously) writes, "We've just dropped a new study we've been working on for a year. You know how it keeps being claimed that we need longer copyrights because nobody will invest in making works available if they're in the public domain? Heald and some others have done some great work debunking that in the US context, but now we've finally tested this hypothesis in other countries by looking at the relative availability of ebooks to libraries. It's also the first time anyone has been able to compare availability of identical works (by significant authors) across jurisdictions. The books we sampled were all in the public domain in Canada and NZ, all under copyright in Australia, and a mix in the US (courtesy of its historical renewal system)."

"So what'd we find? That Canada and NZ (public domain) have access to more books and at cheaper prices than Australia (copyright) and the US (mixed). Also that publishers don't seem to have any problem competing with each other on the same popular titles. And, sadly but not surprisingly: 59% of our sampled 'culturally significant' authors had no books available to libraries in any country regardless of copyright status. That's because even the shortest terms wildly outlast most books' commercial life (even where they still have cultural value). ..."