News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem by coldtea on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @09:15AM (#7943654)
>I can't tell if this is a joke or not. But there is HPMOR and countless others.

Not a joke at all. Especially if HPMOR is the best example one can come up with (or one of the best).

I mean, not even the actual Harry Potter is any work of literary genius. I'm talking about Melville, Nobokov, Joyce, Dostoyevsky and such. It's not like literature would lose anything important if HPMOR wasn't available.

Re:Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem by watwut on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @12:46PM (#7945142)
"It's not like literature would lose anything important if HPMOR wasn't available."

It would probably lost a lot of readers, especially among young people. If you remove pure fun please reading as an option, less of them will find themselves in mood for something more serious.

Re:Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem by anigbrowl on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @02:36PM (#7945904)
Why? It's not like there are no other literary works that entertain the intellect.
Re:Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem by Houshalter on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @11:12AM (#7944433)
I could of course say the same thing about [insert your favorite books]. This is ridiculously subjective and has nothing to do with the issue.
Re:Houston, We Have A Public Domain Problem by coldtea on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @01:34PM (#7945492)
Good literature is more like good code (someone who knows about programming can tell it from bad code) than like brace style (a mostly random choice).

I think the idea that art/literature is "ridiculously subjective" is mostly on the west side of the Atlantic. In ole Europe we tend to take our literary canon seriously, and don't think that all taste is equally OK. Of course individual readers and critics might prefer X over Y, but the value of great works and authors is not doubted in aggregate.

E.g just because some people like Bieber and others like Mingus, doesn't make Bieber as just good as Mingus. Music/literature/etc is a craft (in which one can tell a good from a bad practicer, even if he is not "into" the final artifact) rather than something like different ice cream flavors.