RFC Deadline Looms For "Orphan Works" copy

psychonaut writes "As previously reported on Slashdot, the US Copyright Office is currently reviewing the law as it applies to "orphan works" and "abandonware". The question is how to treat works (books, films, software, etc.) for which the copyright owner cannot be found so that permission can be granted to republish or create derivative works. "The issue is whether orphan works are being needlessly removed from public access and their dissemination inhibited. If no one claims the copyright in a work," they write, "it appears likely that the public benefit of having access to the work would outweigh whatever copyright interest there might be." The Copyright Office has been soliciting comments from the public since 26 January 2005. Now, as their 25 March deadline draws nearer, the EFF, along with freeculture.org and Public Knowledge, have teamed up to produce a website,Orphan Works, which gives some background on the issue and makes it easy to submit comments directly to the Copyright Office." And while you're at, contribute to the EFF. Good organization.

Comments

What's wrong with the current system?

[bigtallmofo]

Why would anyone have a problem with a totally unaffiliated company buying the copyright of a work from a bankrupted company for pennies and then holding that copyrighted content hostage for the next 75 years?

Anyone that has a problem with that is applying too much common sense to the copyright system.

Re:What's wrong with the current system?

[zotz]

"Say for instance, you find a nice picture you want to incorporate and maybe it looks quite old, but maybe its unclear whether copyright has expired."

What about this idea?

Can't find copyright owner?

Compulsory license applies. Fees paid to government. Invested by government in safe investments. Government keeps half of profits on investments and other half goes to pay authors who create copyleft works. Actual copyright owners who find their works being used under a compulsory can claim monies fgrom the government. (Can't get the profits earned in the meantime though.

Compulsory license still applies to the works in question and to any derivatives.

all the best,

drew

Re:What's wrong with the current system?

[oliverthered]

I would say copyright should last for 25 years or in the event of the death of the author until any children are 25 years old.

If you can find any work of mine 25 years old your welcome to it, and in 25 years time you can have all the work I've done up until today, I doubt I'll even be able to remember what most of it was, and it will no doubt be useless except for historical interest.

Tone of words is interesting

[barrkel]

"If no one claims the copyright in a work," they write, "it appears likely that the public benefit of having access to the work would outweigh whatever copyright interest there might be."

This indicates that the copyright office leans extremely strongly towards copyright interests. Is there any indication that they (the US copyright office) have the same perspective as most of the rest of us re copyright as enforced monopoly etc.?

Other copyright issues

[sandstorming]

I'd like to see the laws also fixed on how long it is before works pass into the public domain. The so called disney effect (the extending of copyright periods after authors death, being done just before disney stuff reaches public domain) really needs to be fixed. Someone (and I can't remember his name) did a fantastic conference somewhere on copyright issues. http://free-culture.org/index.html has some great info.

Why doesn't Slashdot start a PAC?

[cybrthng]

Obviously in todays political environment Money Talks. Is there any interest in the collective pool of technically minded folks from Slashdot starting a Political Action Committee in the sense that we support progressive, technological and scientific issues & candidates with our money and not just our collective angst?

SlashPAC if you will.

It would be a great place for us to consolidate our beliefs (wiki) and put our money where our mouth is to support politics and issues that reiterate our beliefs and values as a community.

It would make calls for help like this easier to answer and give us some strength to lean on.

Re:Why doesn't Slashdot start a PAC?

[MurkyWater]

I don't know if this had previously been discussed but I've been thinking that something like this would be a good idea. We constantly see the effect Slashdot has on webservers. I would imagine a PAC consisting of even a portion of slashdotters could do great things. Especially if we worked together with other groups such as Citizen Works, the EFF, and the ACLU.

This is humorous in a way.

[bigattichouse]

I was trying to secure rights to stream several movies.. and guess what, for all the MPAA and RIAA's heavy handedness over people not getting rights? I couldn't... couldn't even figure out who to talk to, and no one that I called could do more than refer me to some large outlets that said "We don't do that." So not only are they going after people for electronic distribution of their works, they make it damn near impossible to actually license said works for electronic distribution. silly bastards. To put this in the perspective of the post, I honestly felt that they had "abandoned" the electronic medium, I hope the law says "fire away" to people who can't find licensing channels for works.

Corporate influence

[wschalle]

Corporate influence will play more part in this than anything the public will ever say about it.

Re:Duplication of efforts?

[geminidomino]

Depends... If SlashPAC was pro-spam, it would be equally as worthless as the EFF.

(Yes, that single position, that the EFF presumes to tell me what I should and should not do with my private property, does indeed preclude ANY chance of me giving them one red cent.)

Orpan works legislation is a trap

[Anonymous Coward]

Orphan works legislation ... it can be used in 2020 to again increase the length of copyright ownership. The unethical publishers and copyright holders will demand that the 99 year copyright expiration date be further increased because orphan works will be available for the public. I don't know sounds like they'll be given an easy path out.

Plus, how do you know when something is an orphan work? Is it fair that some copyright holders get more "rights" and others dont?

All creators and profitters of new works benefitted from public availability of knowledge, yet it seems some dont wish to give back. Especially with patents, patents are being awarded for 20 years when most of the inventions would have been invented by others within that 20 years. Only a few hundred patents a year should be awarded and the term decreased to 14 years.

It's ridiculous that 100 years ago when it took much longer for a person to profit off a work, that the copyright term was short. But nowadays a person can profit off their work much faster yet they maintain copyright for longer (99 years following death of creator). This 99 years will be extended again by the 2020's no doubt.

Re:Part 1: What I find _ok_ about copyright

[swv3752]

See, the problem comes in that my taxes are being used to enforce your copyright. The deal is, for helping to enforce your copyright, we get free access after a limited time. The problem is that it becomes unlimited for any practical consideration. Anything created during my lifetime I can reasonably expect to die before a copyrighted work becomes public domain.

Re:Part 1: What I find _ok_ about copyright

[zotz]

"So, again, I have nothing against copyright as a way for authors to make money. Beats not having those works available in the first place. Maybe it's not the perfect system, but it's the best we have so far."

No, I disagree, in fact, I think we have had a better copyright system in the past and have been making it steadily worse.

I sometimes can't decide if I should fight to make it better, or fight to make it so bad that everyone cries foul and calls for scrapping the present system and trying to design a better one from scratch.

Hey, here is a new way for small countries to profit:

Sign on to the copyright conventions. Have citizens publish hugh quantities of material, never mind the quality. Then try to extradite foreigners for copyright violations. Have hugh fines and jail time on the books for such violations. Have local juries find them guilty, extract big money under threat of jail time in less than perfect facilities. Put fines in general fund so that citizens tax burden is reduced. This will "encourage" juries to bring in guilty verdicts.

Anyone see any problems with this? (I should hope so, but what actually would prevent it happening.)

all the best,

drew

What I think

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it easy to maintain the copyright, such as saying "I am so-and-so and I'm renewing everything I have a copyright on." Add a nominal fee and contact information. Require this every few years, say 5 to 7.

Also make it easy to release a copyright into the public domain before normal expiration.

Hmm, sound like a big database. And searching. Google?

The proper term of copyright.

[shimmin]

Let's give the creator the benefit of the doubt and say that whatever they have created is of enduring value, and the copyright on their creation is worth a perpetuity of some annual income A.

Then, the present value of the copyright is, and will remain, A/i, where i is the interest rate.

Meanwhile, at time t, the present value of the copyright they have already held is A/i * (exp[it] - 1).

So, at some time, it is fair to both the author and public to expire the copyright, because the present value of the copyright (that is being transferred from author to public) is equal to the present value of the copyright that the author has held in the past (that was given to the author by the public). This occurs when t = (ln 2)/i.

Then, the proper term of copyright depends on the interest rate, thusly:

2% 35 years
3% 23 years
4% 17 years
5% 14 years
6% 12 years
7% 10 years
8% 9 years

Re:Part 2: What I find _wrong_ about it

[zotz]

"What I find all wrong about copyright, as it is right now, is that it also gives the right to _kill_ a work of art or a program. You can buy the copyright to something for the _sole_ purpose of burying it 6 ft deep. I.e., making sure no more copies of it will be made.

Which was _not_ the purpose of copyright in the first place. The idea was to secure a source of income for those publishing books, _but_ that was only a means to another end: having those books available to society. Using copyright as a way to make them UNavailable, is IMHO contrary to the whole spirit and idea of copyright."

You are so right on this. There needs to be compulsory licenses at least to prevednt this practice. Perhaps they only need to kick in when the copyright owners refuse to keep the work available to the mass market at mass market prices.

"And just for the sake of a wanton comparison with Soviet Russia, I find it stupid that while we all were/are outraged when a dictatorship tries to suppress a book, we all shrug and find it normal when a corporation does the same via copyright. I mean, geesh, Stalin could have just bought the exclusive distribution rights in the USSR of the exact same works, and killed them via copyright, and we'd all suddenly no longer find it abhominable. It would be just normal business. Think about it."

You are certainly racking up the good points. Perhaps he could even have used "eminent domain" theories to take the work in the first place.

"So IMHO the copyright should only last as long as people can still order that book or program or music from you, for no more than the original price (i.e., no "yeah, it's still available, but we'll charge 10,000,000$ for it" scams), and have it delivered within a reasonable time frame. The moment that's no longer possible, the copyright should become public domain.

It would also be a self-regulating kinda thing. It's up to the company in case to decide when it's no longer profitable to keep that stock of old books, just for the 1-2 people per year still ordering it. When they decide it's no longer profitable to play that game, sure, make it public domain. But ffs, don't bury it."

This would work. An alternative would be to have all copyrights pass back to the original authors under something like a CC BY-SA or some other copyleft license. This would allow the authors to try earning some more out of their works and at the same time let the general public get access to the works as well for copying, creating derivatives and making money if they can.

Check some of these legal proposals:

http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Copyri gh t_Term_Reform#Legal_Proposals

especially this one:

http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Copyri gh t_Term_Reform/Default

Again, great points.

all the best,

drew

Re:Part 2: What I find _wrong_ about it

[Moraelin]

If the company isn't selling those old comics any more, how is it profitting from them any more to start with? What would the income lost there? The exactly zero dollars that they're losing there?

And if re-printing old comics would be so profitable for you, what's keeping the copyright owner from doing the same? I mean, they don't even have the scanning costs in that equation?

Basically all I'm saying is that I _do_ support the idea that "ok, you're allowed to make money from creating something." But then comes the moment they're _not_, in fact, either making any money or even trying to make any money out of it. Then it seems to me like we're way past the point and the scope of what copyright was supposed to solve.

But I'm also for keeping in mind what copyright was supposed to solve: making those works _available_. The moment that's no longer happening, it seems to me like the copyright no longer fulfills its _main_ role and function.

As I've said: as long as it's still profitable to print those old comics (again, they don't have the scanning costs, so it's easier for them to be profitable than it is for you), sure, let them keep the copyright.

You'll also notice that I didn't really put any limits there on _how_ it is to be delivered. I just said I should be able to order it, for no more than the original price. It can be a PDF, if it's a book, or it can be printed-to-order on a nearby color laser printer for comics, or whatever. They just have to keep making it _available_ to keep the copyright.

Because, as I've said, that was the whole idea of copyright to start with. It was _not_ just supposed to support corporate money. So I hardly think it's that unreasonable to expect it to actually fulfill that promise.