An unusual solution to IP issues

[alexxkay]

Recently re-read Roger Zelazny's "This Moment of the Storm". It's set on a frontier planet, in a universe that has moderately common interplanetary travel. This travel, however, is STL, so round trips at least dozens, often hundreds of years. One incidental paragraph jumped out at me:

All the little libraries Out Here are full of rare books--first editions of best sellers which people pick up before they leave Someplace Else, and which they often donate after they've finished. We assume that these books have entered the public domain by the time they reach here, and we reproduce them and circulate our own editions. No author has ever sued, and no reproducer has ever been around to be sued by representatives, designates, or assigns.