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Congress Considers Reform On Orphaned Works

Posted by kdawson on from the mashup-with-daring-and-whimsy dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate to liberalize copyright law in the case of orphaned works. The almost-identical bills would limit the penalties for infringement in cases where the copyright holder could no longer be identified. The idea is that one could declare their intent to use the work with the Copyright Office and if the copyright holder didn't care to respond, they would only be able to get 'reasonable compensation' instead of excessive statutory penalties. Public Knowledge has more details on the bills."

9 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Reasonable Compensation by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I did RTFA but I haven't yet read the text of the two bills (I'll get to it, I read a lot of bills...yeah I know, get a life). I would love to know what 'reasonable compensation' is. If the copyright holder cannot be found or doesn't exist, there should be no compensation if suddenly 10 years later someone who was once a member of the company that once held the copyright shows up and says give me money.

    1. Re:Reasonable Compensation by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's basically right, and it's a good thing. Registration is traditional in the American copyright system, and we have not been without it for very long; just long enough to see how awful automatic copyright grants are. So long as copyright registration is but the most minor of hurdles (contact information for the applicant, a couple of copies of the work for the Library of Congress, a token fee), it will serve to make the copyright system available to help those who want it, while letting the public benefit from the works of authors who don't care about copyrights in the first place. There's no down side.

      That having been said, I'm not a fan of this particular bill. Shorter terms, non-automatic renewals, and timely registration as a prerequisite for copyright are much better, even though they'll take more work to achieve. I'd rather pursue that directly, rather than waste time on these mediocre reforms.

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      -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
    2. Re:Reasonable Compensation by shmlco · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Putting on my tinfoil hat, why do I suspect that the big media companies have more to gain from this than anyone else? "Well, your Honor, we made a reasonable effort to find the author, couldn't do so... and then we made the movie."

      --
      Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
  2. Just making it easier for big corps... by yroJJory · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This one's been lurking through congress lately. Basically, it's so big media conglomerates can use things they find on the web and places like YouTube without having to pay for them. It's all about protections for them and none for artists and creators.

    More to read here.

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    Jory
    1. Re:Just making it easier for big corps... by Adambomb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I do not understand how anyone can read these details and not see exactly what you're seeing.

      To expand on one of the why's for those that may question this, Corporations will have a department or at least a set of dedicated employees who do nothing but verify and respond to contested copyrights that they own. Individuals or small businesses may not be able to afford the manpower needed to manage such overhead. This means that corporations can keep a tight leash on their IP, while making use of material where the creator is identified as "not likely to keep up". Effectively, this increases the base "cost" of maintaining a stable of copyrights so that the riffraff will be right out (5mil$ at the door please).

      This is but one of the things such legislation is likely to be used for, and i'm sure others out there can point out more.

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      Ice Cream has no bones.
  3. Why limit penalties? by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the copyright holder can't be found or identified, why bother with limiting the penalties? Why not just make the work public domain?

    1. Re:Why limit penalties? by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, making it public domain makes sure a whole can of worms doesn't get opened.

  4. The flaw is internet anonymization. by davolfman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This has been discussed many places and the consensus is that it severely weakens private copyright. With this an artist who shows work low-res online could be anonymized by someone else grabbing the work to post on a forum or the like. This breaks the chain and makes the artist impossible to track. This isn't a problem if you're the RIAA or other MAFIAA as your spy network will catch it for you, but for the little guy, such as ever private artist and photographer out there this is total murder.

    When you think about it this has mostly just been produced as a bandaid to allow things like archiving to occur in the absence of a strong public domain and working fair use.

  5. Re:Orphaned work you say ? by quanticle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No. This means that when the members of the RIAA/MPAA/BSA want to use someone else's work, they only have to show that they "couldn't identify" the copyright holder, and so can use work while paying only a token penalty. Basically, now a small copyright holder has to undertake the same sort of monitoring as a large record studio. Otherwise they risk having their work appropriated by larger corporation.

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    We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it