All the most successful authors in the world all seem to use publishers.
All you need to do is replace publisher with online ad companies, like google, who will reap all the reward. Say there was no publisher you, me, everyone publishes Harry Potter books on our website. People will use google to find them and google AdWords on own websites to try to monetize someone else’s property, but Only the ad company wins.
Honest question have you ever created anything of value that someone with deep pockets cane along and ripped off?
Twain's quote seems to be that when copyright expires, the retail price of a book stays the same, just the publisher stops paying the author (or their descendants).
It's a long time since something went out of copyright in the United States, but I've seen similar things in other fields. In ~2008, Saleae figured out a way to make a (24MHz 8-channel) logic analyser with an off-the-shelf microcontroller, and sold it for $149 [1]. Today, you can get a chinese clone using the same microcontroller for $9 [2].
Seems to me the retail price didn't stay the same, rather it dropped by 94%, presumably due to multiple clone manufacturers competing on price.
Removing the context from copyright into the larger umbrella of IP (patents and trademarks) you touch on the other half of the coin (consumer experience) whereas obviously Twain focused on the creator side.
From the consumer side, I don’t purchase anything from amazon because of the counterfeit problem. Now consider counterfeits scaled to every facet of your life. In a world of no IP protections consider walking into a mall and seeing 10 Apple stores and not knowing which is the real Apple store selling real products, and which are low quality fakes. Consider the problem with fake negative reviews by competition paid for by competition scaled out to fake, shit products to destroy good will in your company/products/brand.
The Twain quote says "[IP right expiry] generously gives it to the eighty-eight millions. That is the idea. If it did that, that would be one thing. But it does not do anything of the kind."
I propose copyright and patent expiry _does_ do that, as illustrated by the example of a logic analyser being 94% cheaper.
You’re talking about price. That’s not what Twain was talking about, read the statement.
In your example, Twain would have been the original creator and owner of the equalizer IP. He could have licensed that to one or all of the manufacturers, it’s his choice, so if he licensed to many manufacturers and one sells it for 94% cheaper the consumer has their choice, but whether you buy the generic or name brand the Creator is going to get paid a royalty for their idea no matter what.
But the law says after a term the government takes the creators idea and gives it to the public...but that’s not what happens, really what happens is the government takes the creators ideas and now says deep pocket business can now make money on the creators ideas....like in your example, you didn’t take the IP and make it, you bought it from another company who cut the creator out and they are making money.
Further what Twain would say is...well why doesn’t the government come and take the property of the manufacturer (like the actual land, building, machines) after a term, is there really any difference between Twain’s ideas that manifest into a book or the business owners ideas that manifest into the business (land/building/machines).
What do you think Twain means by giving it to the 88 million? When he says "If it did that, that would be one thing" what do you think is the "that" he's talking about, the acceptable result of copyright expiry, in terms of regular people reading his writing?
I don't think Twain expects that out-of-copyright books should be available for less than the cost of paper, or that everyone would have a printing press at home, or that he was anticipating photocopiers or smartphones or e-book readers.
I think Twain meant a larger number of people having access to the content, such as by serialisation in newspapers and super-cheap printed copies.
