A Picture of Marketing

10/14/2009 Mises Wire Jeffrey A. Tucker

I just received an exciting notice that one of my favorite books, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, is being released October 27, and the pre-orders are going well. But wait: according to copyright theory, this isn’t suppose to happen. There are many editions out there already. The book is long ago in public domain. And this is hardly the only case. Tens of thousands of public domain works are still sold the same as new releases. Intriguing. A theory of copyright that posits that this is impossible has a problem.

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