The works of Yeats and Freud are now available online thanks to the expiration of their copyrights. (Thanks to Jilly Dybka’s Poetry Hut Blog for this one.) Thanks to the greed-driven expansion of copyright protections future readers will have to wait a good deal longer to access the complete works of Ashbery (for example) online and for free.
Isn’t this expansion really just a corporatist ploy to control what should be the intellectual property of our species?
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
Hello, Robert. I agree, of course, that poets aren't paid enough for their work and have no beef with copyright extending for a poet's (or any artist's) lifetime, even a decade or so beyond so that heirs can have some control over where and how work is published. (This is especially the case for poets who become prominent only after their deaths.) But in the end poetry–all art,
Here, I disagree. Mostly because I don't think artists are paid enough for their life's work, no matter whether they produce that work under the auspices of some corporate distributor or on their own, which the Internet is making more and more feasible. My daughter is an artist, a painter, and I want her paid for her work, because it probably is the only way she'll be able to make a
To answer your closing question: absolutely yes.<br /><br />What scares me is the reality that most authors don't get it… or I should say they "find themselves on the other side of this issue."<br /><br />In my other life as an educator and educational technology person, I promote (and run in circles that also promote) open teaching and learning, Creative Commons and other methods
Thanks for the links. I always find it surprising what poets/artists are or aren't cool with their material being freely obtained online. Like, gangsta rapper RZA (recently featured in a song called "If it Don't Make Dollaz Then it Don't Make Sense") has said he has no problem with people "stealing" his music online, he just wants people to hear his work. Whereas