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Opening the Public Doman to Orphan Books
InklingBooks writes "In the late 1990s, when Hollywood paid an all-too-willing Congress to extend copyright terms to 90 years, an existing problem grew much worse. Many out-of-print books, including some SciFi classics, became orphans. Though still "protected" by copyright, there was no one around who could give legal permission to publish them. Their author were dead, and it was expensive and often impossible to find out who (if anyone) now owned their literary estates. Fortunately, the Copyright Office is now taking comments on how the law might be changed. See Orphan Works."
Public Doman do be related to Bayle Doman?
Kill all PACs and Politicians. Problem solved.
I wonder if one could digitally create a series of independent virtual limited liability companies for the sole purpose of testing orphanhood of abandonware books and media. Each LLC would be endowed with $0.01 in assets and be the titular legal entity attached to the free distribution of one potentially orphaned book. Should the author/heirs/owners come forward, the LLC would die instantly but not affect any of the other LLC orphan-media-representing companies.
IANAL, but I wonder how the tools and sensibilities of digital systems (high scalability at extremely low costs) can be applied to legal and corporate structures. If one can create a new company as easily as one creates a new domain name, some interesting (and some not so pleasant) things might occur.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If something can be done about this problem it would be an incredible step forward in copyright law.
Hopefully they will also consider "abandonware" not just books.
I was lucky enough to be able to get in touch with the author of my favorite computer book to get permission republish the work under a Creative Commons license: Thinking Forth. Computer books are notorious for going out of print but they have high value to vintage computer users, and some like TF are valuable classics in and of themselves.
Not everyone is so fortunate though. Usually the copyright holder is impossible to get hold of or they have no interest in even discussing it. Or else you are dealing with a legal department that just wants to keep any possible liabilities to a minimum. No benefit to them, so not worth it to deal with you.
It's nice to see people are finally noticing that overly protected copyrights are a problem. I encourage everyone to write them a comment, you have until March 25th, 5pm EST. They accept "electronic mail" so you don't even have to physically write anything. It's so easy! It's great that they're requestings comments and focusing on the issue. My question is will they actually do anything with the comments? Or will it just be a matter of "Oh .. look ... that's how people feel. Oh well, let's not do anything."
How about for any work under copyright, they have to PUBLISH the owner of the copyright to the library of congress every 10 years, or the copyright is to be considered expired. In effect, you have to tell people who owns the copyright in order to maintain the copyright.
In that way, rather than them reporting that they received 5 comments, 4 of which were from Big Media and 1 from some cranky old bastard from North Dakota, they will have to acknowledge that it is an issue of great public interest and they will have well reasoned comments to base further work on.
Speaking as someone who has a regulatory role (in a completely different arena that is not relevant), well written submissions that are not hyperbolic or impractical can be persuasive. The more of them there are, the better.
I like the EFF's idea, that copyright is for 20 years, and after that, you only need to pay 1 dollar to extend it each year. That way old copyrights can return to the public. Also make a maximum of 100 years per copyright. Solves most issues, more things return to the public domain that are not used anymore. And people can extend copyrights if used.
I would like a mix, 60 years, and the extension costs more each time. At 60 years, its 100, 61 its 200, then 400, so on, that way it gets increasingly costly per year to keep copyrights. Tts a way to tax the copyrights, after 80 years, unless its a money maker, the owner wouldnt renew.
And on the side, this funds the copyright office to do more indepth reporting and watching for duplicate copyrights or invalid search.
EFF has a good start to handle copyrights, wish they had more political power. I feel sometimes like the EFF is like the ACLU, always in court loosing, or working on the wrong rights. (My perspective anyways..)
Ok, how about this approach?
Copyright grabts you an exclusive first-sale right. If you stopp selling something, then obviously you do not want this right anymore.
Copyright should include an obligation to make the work available to the public, in exchange for the exclusive sale right granted to the copyright holder by the public.
I see no reason why "hording" should be allowed. If the copyright owner is not interested in selling the work anymore, be it book, game, software, or whatever, then copyright should expire.
"hording" a work would still be possible by selling it only for exorbitant prices intended to scare of everyone, so this is not a perfect solution. But it would require more effort, and orphaned works would be impossible
What do you think?
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Did you mean: Domain
Excellent idea. I've heard it before, but can't recall where. It is definitely a problem with older books that are virtually impossible to find, but can't be reprinted (or in this modern age, scanned and put online).
The last copyright extension allowed an exception allowing libraries to copy books in the last 20 years of their copyright if new editions are unavailable, but practically speaking this will have little effect. Something much better is required.
The U.S. is obligated by international treaty to a minimum copyright period - I'm thinking it is 28 years? but beyond that, registration of copyrighted material with a fee of $1 per year would be sufficient to make most orphaned materials available. A maximum period of 100 years would also be preferable to the current Life of the Author plus 70 years, which considering the past performance of Congress is liable to become Life of the Author plus forever.
Michael Hart has frequently noted that over 90% of profits come in the first 6 years of a book's publication. Considering that (under U.S. law) the purpose of Copyright is to encourage the arts and sciences, the current law is clearly a joke.
Baldur
True they claim that it's not availible for commerical use but if I was to use it as basis for say a Graphic Novel or print edition they would have no rights to defend. Regardless of the effort it took to produce the work, the fact is that they have no rights. Anymore then a printer would. The author Thomas Preskett Prest had been dead over even the puffed up copyright of 90 years. Arno Press, which published a version in 1970 can't create a copyright from use of a public domain source. Even then copyright had already lapsed.
The point I am trying to make here is that claimed copyrights are mostly faked. UofV has no protection, never had never will. Likewise with Arno Press.
The only thing I would worry about is that the story was Biographical (un-biographical) in nature and not a work of fiction. Then I may have Varney show up on my doorstep some night wanting to take a bite out of me.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Why don't you make these comments to the site instead of here. Or at least in both places. I don't think the Copyright Office is going to come here to read the comments.
Why not have the copyright fall over into a sub category where the copyright still exists and anyone who wants to use it pays, directly to the copyright office, a set License fee per unit based on a % of the wholesale price the item is sold for to use it for commercial use but allow unlicensed use for all non-commercial purposes?
A small % of the fee could then be used to fund the work involved to document the use and fees payed the rest can go to the copyright owner should one surface and the work could then revert back to a normal copyrighted work to continue until the original copyright was due to expire. Any fees not claimed within the copyright period could then be used exclusively to fund the maintenance of an electronic public domain repository.
Clearly it would have to be established what steps must be taken by a potential commerial entity to establish and contact the copyright owner and some burden could still be placed on the owner themselves. They need not be required to register the copyright but if they don't register it within 5 years of the work's creation and the work becomes considered abandon because they didn't register and couldn't be contacted then they must accept the set fee rather than be able to sue for breach of copyright as long as the commercial entity which used the work can show they followed the steps required to attempt to contact the copyright owner.
Someone smarter than me will surely point out some flaws in my thinking but I am sure a workable solution based around these ideas could be implemented.
The business of proclaiming a new copyright to an old work is mostly FUD, though one does have to be careful because the look-and-feel of the new version may carry some protection of its own -- the typesetting, changes in punctuation and spelling, etc. -- though even these carry less protection than is usually claimed.
More to the point, the organizations that copyright their new transcription are simply used to wanting to claim ownership of anything that might possibly make them money in the future, with little regard to what is in the best interest of society, or even their own self-interest. It is just the knee-jerk bureaucratic instinct to cover one's ass. The new copyrights on old works mean almost nothing.
Baldur
The students at FreeCulture.org have created a Web site to encourage people to comment:
http://freeculture.org/orphans/
I hope you'll submit.
Gavin
Florida Free Culture
What's a Doman and why do we want to open it?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Closed code for commercial software is already protected as a Trade Secret, you could not release it without breaking the law anyway. Why is it then also granted copyright?
Copyright is granted as a reward for making your work publically available. Closed source programs should not qualify.
Changa hates change.
This would be easy to get around. Anyone who owned a copyright on somethng that they didn't want to distribute at the moment could offer to sell their work for 500 billion dollars. You answered this yourself.
Just because a work seems "orphaned" doesn't mean it is. Someone somewhere still owns it. Just because they don't have a shingle and a website announcing it doesn't mean they own it any less.
As an author I must say I like this approach, as long as strict standards were imposed so fees didn't become an easy buck to the repository minders...