I'm kind of amazed that only that and the 78's archive was lost. At least there's Project Gutenberg et al to help with the books, and meanwhile the IA does still archive a vast load of video material, software, and no doubt, other stuff.

I did, thanks.

What criteria decided those books? It must be a relatively small number of all books

How many of them are not backed up somewhere else?

They don’t need to die, they need to go back to what they used to be. The first copyright law was called the Statute of Anne and it covered a work for 14 years.

That’s a totally reasonable amount of time for an author/publisher to make their money. And it’s reasonable for creators to want to get paid for their work.

And then it should be public domain.

Not unless he became Asian. You can click on the picture in the article to make it full screen. Not Woz.