Congress Considers Reform On Orphaned Works

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."

Re:Reasonable Compensation

[yroJJory]

The "reasonable compensation" argument is simply window dressing. What this bill is really about is making copyright registration mandatory if you want to ever get paid for your works. Currently, all creations are copyright the moment they are completed. Registration is optional, but helps in seeking legal actions against infringers.

Day Late & a Dollar Short

[Alan R Light]

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 issues like accidental infringement.

Re:The flaw is internet anonymization.

[innocent_white_lamb]

So they will send it off to the copyright office to be identified.
 
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....

Right Problem, Wrong Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The orphaned works problem was arguably created by grossly excessive copyright extensions. The simple solution is a return to reasonable copyright terms, say, 20 years with an optional 20 year extension for registered copyrights.

These bills would create privately owned and operated copyright registration databases. How much will it cost me to register my copyrights? As a photographer, I create thousands of copyrighted works every year. Even if the price is less than $1.00 per work, I can't afford it. Once again, Congress is screwing over the little guy in favor of big business interests.

Apropos captcha: nonsense