Zithe7

It sounds from reading your other answers that not every book is gonna be made available, only those books that publishers agree on and public domain books. Sounds to me like a typical non-controversial, well-intended, state-run, culture-promoting project where the government is gonna do something like the Gutenberg project plus ask publishers if they would contribute some works. Definitely not a revolutionary new stance or interpretation of copyright.

If this was the case, when zblinks asks:

Won't this completely undermine copyright laws and ultimately cause economic demise for the author and publisher?

A more helpful answer would have been something like:

Copyright is being respected as usual. Although we are digitizing everything, we'll only make available public domain books and those commercial books that publishers agree to.

Instead, you answer with an argument in favor of a looser enforcement of copyright (which is interesting thanks in that I hadn't thought of that before.) This makes it look as if indeed, Norway is taking a whole new stance on copyright.

So let me ask you, are you intentionally perpetuating, by omission, a glorified but erroneous interpretation of these news for karma, good sir? Or perhaps you are ideologically motivated?

Also, I want to mention the the library does not need to "buy" the books ;) Since it is decided by legislation that every published book should be submitted to the national library in at least three copies ;)

This is pretty common practice.

As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK.

A list of legal deposit libraries by countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

You are describing public domain.

I take it you are implying that the terms should be much shorter. Public domain in Norway starts 70 years after the death of the author. This government project isn't changing that unless you have information that says otherwise.

What should the term be like, in your opinion?

So basically, Norway is not actually gonna make every book available, only those books that the publishers decide to or public domain books like the Gutenberg project. Is that what you are saying?

Is the government forcing the issue at all through legislation or is it just asking nicely? Because if it's the latter, this isn't as much of a big deal as people is thinking.

If the government is just asking nicely, what kind of coverage do you expect of non-public domain books published? Do you expect most of the books to be published, or just a tiny minority, or what?

So some Norwegian writers and publishers get grants and that means that I don't get to make money on the Norwegian translation of a book I wrote in another country?

But ok, let's even say I'm a Norwegian writer and I get a grant of 40,000 kroners. Does that mean all my books that are published in Norwegian, for the rest of my life, now belong to the public domain? That's potentially millions of kroners lost. I'm losing quite a bit of value if that is the case. Or am I supposed to look for another job to support myself, or keep hoping for grants? Perhaps you'd like me to look for a patron? Man this approach seems very shitty, unless we were to heavily restructure the economy and have the government take control of a lot of things that... Oh, oooh, Wait...

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