Copyright Tension - What should be public?
There is a great deal of debate and tension over what should be protected by copyright, and what should be freely available to the public. This is true for many types of creative works - but especially for books, music, video, and software. On the one hand we have governments extending or considering extending the length of copyright protection.
On the other, we have projects where various parties are working to digitize entire libraries (or at least the parts no longer protected by copyright) and make them available to the public for free.
One fundamental problem is that as copyright is automatic, there is often no easy way to track down copyright owners to ask for permission. It also thus protects material that no longer has commercial value, with therefore no practical reason for protection. And many works that the copyright owners would be glad to make available to the public are not because of that.
Professor Lawrence Lessig writes a thought provoking article in Wired entitled: They're Not Worthy - Why extend the copyright on works that no longer have commercial value?