Slashdot Log In
Congress Considers Reform On Orphaned Works
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Apr 26, 2008 03:27 PM
from the mashup-with-daring-and-whimsy dept.
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."
Related Stories
Submission: Congress Considers Orphaned Works Act by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Reasonable Compensation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reasonable Compensation (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Reasonable Compensation (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Reasonable Compensation (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Re:Reasonable Compensation (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, that's right. Copyrights exist to cause authors to create and publish their works so that the public domain can be more enriched than it otherwise might be. However, if an author in country A simply doesn't care about -- i.e. wasn't incentivized by -- a copyright in country B, then why would it make sense for country B to give him the copyright? If it was important to the author, he would pursue it. If it is not important to him, he'll ignore it.
If the author apparently doesn't care, why should I? And since the author seems to have been sufficiently incentivized by something else (possibly country A's copyrights, possibly something else altogether unrelated to copyright), it would be pointless to give him a copyright. It would be liking paying for something that's being given away for free!
I am in the US, and I am really only interested in the US reforming its copyright laws. Since the US is a large market for many works, I have no doubt that very, very many foreign authors will register for copyrights, just as our domestic authors will. And if they're uninterested, then why give them what they are unwilling to get themselves? Maybe it will result in the work being made more popular here than it would be by an author who ignores the US market. That's a plus. And if nothing comes of it, then there's really no harm, and there is still the slight benefit of the work being available if that changes, which is unlikely.
I would like to point out that I'm not playing favorites here; I think that the US should unilaterally offer national treatment. That is, we should permit foreign authors to get copyrights on exactly the same basis as US authors, with completely identical treatment. Further, that we should do so, regardless of how foreign countries behave toward us. After all, the mission of copyright is to spur the creation and publication of works in order to get them, unencumbered, into the hands of the public. The nationality of the author is quite irrelevant. Ditto for the language of the form; let there be Spanish and French and Arabic and Chinese forms as well, with enough translators at the Copyright Office to process them.
I would hope, of course, that other countries would follow our example and also unilaterally grant national treatment to foreign authors. I'm not too worried about it, though. Remember, the US did perfectly well with not being a member of the Berne Convention (which sucks, btw) until 1989. In fact, joining it (and the ramp-up involved) is the source of many of the ills we currently suffer!
Meanwhile, I'd like to point out that, AFAIK (I'm not a patent attorney), there is no reciprocity in the patent system. An inventor has to file for a patent in the US, if he wants rights there, in Japan, if he wants rights there, etc. having to deal with the local rules, which can vary wildly, retaining local experts, etc. A registration formality for copyrights would be a piece of cake, by comparison! I can't imagine the paperwork being difficult (name of author, title of work, etc.), and the various national post offices seem to have international mail under control, so deposit would be no problem. Unlike with patents, authors wouldn't need to hire local lawyers to handle the registration (though I wouldn't mind if they did, being a copyright lawyer myself!), and with the falling US dollar, what is a token fee here is likely even less of a hurdle for many foreigners.
How is this bad? It means that if someone from Pottsylvania writes a book for local consumption, and never bothers to register it with the US, that it is in the American public domain, but does that harm him? No, not really; he was ignoring the US anyway. And if someone else does use the book, say, as the basis for a movie, well then at least something productive happened, instead of the author allowing it to rot on the vine. The author isn't being forced, he isn't bei
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree with such a seven year scheme, with one minor condition: the initial seven year copyright period should begin on the date of first authorized publication in a fixed form. Until published with the authorization of the creator, any material should be the property of the creator, period, with no right of anyone to publish it during the life of the creator. This protects against a certain class of abuses of works that otherwise would not be protected at all for lack of registration (someone publ
Just making it easier for big corps... (Score:5, Insightful)
More to read here. [awn.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just making it easier for big corps... (Score:4, Interesting)
More than that, the penalties should be nonexistent provided that the person making it available does not make a profit doing so. Otherwise, it should be a flat rate statutory amount depending on the nature of the work.
Particularly with music publishers, depending on the publisher, it can be a pain to (legally) perform out-of-print works if you don't have enough copies and can't buy more. I think that I should automatically have the right to make as many copies as needed to perform any out-of-print work under the condition that I agree to destroy the additional copies and purchase real copies if/when I find out that the work is in print again. It shouldn't be the end user's problem that the company is too lazy to do print-on-demand.... :-)
Parent
Re:Just making it easier for big corps... (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems that everyone favors liberalization of copyright laws only if it helps out the "little guy." Copyright needs to be a balance, allowing both large media holders and individual content creators to play fairly under the same set of rules. This bill would help achieve that.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you live in Sweden? Just think about it for 3 seconds, what if ALL countries did this? Should you have to register in all of them? America != the world.
Re:Just making it easier for big corps... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Just making it easier for big corps... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
LAWYER: Well your honour we made a good faith effort to find the copyright holder, but as we couldn't contact the holder we released an exact copy of all their work in a box set for $59.99 as it was no longer covered by copyright.
JUDGE: What efforts did you undertake?
LAWYER: Well, *cough* we looked for the most obscure and most likely to be out of date address and mailed in alleged copyright owner in the plainest and blandest envelope we could possibly find with a covering
Why limit penalties? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The work is still under copyright and the children of the now deceased copyright holder can still make claims on the work.
Making it public domain opens up a whole new can of worms.
Re:Why limit penalties? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Not all copyrights are registered and there's no sure way to tell if a work is truly abandoned or if you you just haven't found the holder.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it may turn out to be a foreign copyright holder? What then for all those international treaties the USA is always boosting?
The USA seems like an unlikely country to be promoting copyright reform.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest problem with this sort of legislation is that the attorney fees are a part of what makes this kind of suit so expensive for the losing side. If the
Re: (Score:2)
what we need is more rewards for producing the more artistically challenging works. The ones that require real risk and sacrifice to create.
If the product requires real risk and sacrifice to create, copyright registration should only be a very minor obstacle.
We might even see a few low cost 'registrars' whom the creator can just send an electronic copy of the work and for, say $30, will take care of all the work. We might even see places willing to do the filing pro-bono, in exchange for a nice cut of any awards fees from violations down the line. Just one win against Disney could pay for tens of thousands of filings.
Too much of a burden (Score:2)
That said, I expect that it is not too difficult to close this spamming loop
Perhaps this could apply to abandonware (Score:2)
limit for making a compensation claim
Orphaned work you say ? (Score:2)
Does that mean, "when the members can't decide which of them will get the propriety of that piece of work" ?
Re:Orphaned work you say ? (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.
Parent
The flaw is internet anonymization. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If this becomes law, Napster will reappear. Every time someone offers a song, the new napster will not know who owns the copyright. So they will send it off to the copyright office to be identified. After the first few billion, the copyright office will be so far behind that effectively nothing will ever get processed and now all the record companies
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nice thought, but that's not how it will work.
TFA says that private outfits of some kind will have certified databases to identify works, and you send your stuff to them for identification along with an as-yet unspecified fee. So the New Napster would require tens of billions of dollars to send out for identification fees for those billions of songs....
Personally ... (Score:2)
I think that We the People are long overdue to consider reform on Congress itself. After all
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's even worse in the Senate than the House. Some members of the Senate have served for over 30 years.
Day Late & a Dollar Short (Score:2, Informative)
This reform should have been done years ago, but this still doesn't go far enough.
I suppose it's meaningful that some folks in Congress are just now beginning to see that copyright is a very important issue in the information age.
Now, if they would just undo the copyright laws they've passed since 1995, that would be a good start. And then they can undo some more, until the copyright period is reasonable - somewhere between 10 and 30 years. Once they get THAT done, THEN they can address trickier issue
Get rid of registration, first (Score:2)
And then if I ever decide to sue Disney or whomever because they used something of
Re: (Score:2)
EVEN BETTER... (Score:2)
The good faith effort (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that forty years sounds like eternity to the eternally adolescent Geek - but your treasure trove will almost certainly turn out to be an instantly recognizable icon of commercial art and illustration.
The page clipped from Life magazine, the poster that was taped to a dorm room wall.
What looks like a "good faith effort" to you may may look pathetically inadequate and self-serving to a judge. It is altogether too easy not to find what you don't want to find.
Anyone see who introduced this bill? (Score:2)
I'm not from the US... (Score:2)
Perhaps I missed something, but... GPL? (Score:2)
The GPL License is based largely on copyright. You violate the license, you enter the domain of copyright. You violate copyright, you can be su
WTF (Score:2)
Far More Than Overdue (Score:2)
And the US expects international cooperation? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A copyright term of infinity+ years isn't "limited".
Re: (Score:2)
if ( about2expire(mickey_mouse) ) {
copyright_term++;
}
// Once Micky Mouse ceases to be profitable, we will have established what the limit is.
// I expect it may wind up being something like a thousand years.
Re: (Score:2)