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:Just making it easier for big corps...

[bigskank]

While it may be true that this is pushed by big media, I hardly see how this is failing to accord appropriate protections to so-called "amateur" creators. Amateurs, like anyone else, can fairly easily register any work which they create with the copyright office. Further, you can do something like stick an email address or other contact information on the video/image/webpage/etc... so that there is some way for anyone wanting to use your copyrighted work to contact you (this has the dual function of also identifying that the work has an active "owner" who needs to be contacted). Neither of those approaches is overly burdensome, even for amateurs.

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.

Re:Reasonable Compensation

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it might hurt the little guy that makes a shareware program and abandons it (along with its sale). There have been several cases (in the distant past, now) where I've been interested in a shareware program, but the author/store/etc is dead and/or missing.

Re:Just making it easier for big corps...

[smartaleckkill]

since 'copyleft' depends on copyright for any actual *legal weight* i'd guess there are potentially serious implications for FOSS, pretty much as a whole

Re:The flaw is internet anonymization.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it. This will effectively eliminate copyright on the internet, at least for anything that can't be automatically identified with 100% accuracy.

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 will get will be a small percentage of whatever the new napster gets.

Re:Reasonable Compensation

[STrinity]

The big corporations are still going to have their pack of lawyers constantly on this - they'll still get their $ while the little guy will lose.

That's generally true, but not universally. Look in the cheapie bin at your preferred DVD retailer and you'll find public domain releases of The Lucy Show, Beverly Hillbillies, Andy Griffith, Charade and His Girl Friday -- all films and TV shows that at some point a lawyer forgot to renew the copyright on.

Re:Just making it easier for big corps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, how does this affect works by people who publish things on their blog or who are from abroad? If I, as a foreigner, write something in English (such as this text right here) and someone else comes along, likes it and wants to use it commercially, but they can't contact me because -obviously- I'm not going to bother to register everything that I write online, as over here I automatically hold copyright the moment I write something, would they be able to infringe on my copyright, without me being able to get compensation?

Not that I would want to screw people out of money, but if I ever post a story online and people use it without my permission, I'm going to be pissed off mightily!

Also, if a book is published, it says: reproduction of this work is not permitted without written approval by the copyright holder or somesuch. Do claims like that now get invalidated and are you screwed if the copyright office can't find you in time?

Re:Just making it easier for big corps...

[dgatwood]

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.... :-)

Re:Reasonable Compensation

[cpt kangarooski]

...times 163, presumably all different and most in foreign languages if you want the same copyright protection as today.

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