I wish we would bring back manual renewals for copyright. I get that publishers thought it was a hassle to have to do the work for stuff they had not published in decades and had no intention of ever reprinting, but that's kind of the point isn't it? Why is the government locking away works that the original rightsholders no longer care about? The copyright system is supposed to serve the common good, what common good is there from locking away works simply because the original owner lost interest in them? Or worse, when nobody knows who or where the original owner is.
I'm not a big fan of copyright renewals. There are two arguments I here in favor of them.
1) It allows orphaned works to enter the public ___domain sooner.
2) For works that are renewed, it provides information on who the copyright holder is and how they can be contacted.
On the first point, I think that renewal is a poor proxy for determining which works are are orphaned or no longer have commercial value, instead just showing which copyright holders have the most diligent book keeping. Large number of published works will loose copyright protection just due to oversight. A simple mistake shouldn't result in disproportionate consequences (loss of decades of revenue). At the same time other works that are no longer available on the market will be prevented from entering public ___domain by companies that just renew everything.
Furthermore, historically, the USPTO has done a poor job of keeping (and making accessible) records of which works were renewed, and which weren't. Anyone who wants to use an orphaned work has needed to prove a negative, which is difficult to do, so most assume that everything is still copyrighted to avoid liability anyway.
Lastly, just because someone has registered a work (for renewal or otherwise) is not proof that they hold copyright on that work. People have spent decades trying to determine the rightful owner of a work so they can license it, even when it was registered.
Instead, I think what we need is a process for the USPTO to grant third parties permission to use a work when a good faith effort has been made to determine and contact the copyright holder. In my view, this would involve involve paying of statutory license fees to the USPTO who will hold them in escrow. If the owner is eventually determined, they can claim the money, and if no one claims it after some time it goes to fund the endowment for the arts. This would allow the public access to orphaned and disputed works again, and would encourage registration without the strong consequences for forgetting.
I would actually take this a step further and declare that all works are subject to statutory licensing for the second half of their copyright duration, not just orphaned works, and the above process would just be a fallback when the copyright holder can't be contacted. And of course, would shorten the copyright duration as well.
> On the first point, I think that renewal is a poor proxy for determining which works are are orphaned or no longer have commercial value, instead just showing which copyright holders have the most diligent book keeping. Large number of published works will loose copyright protection just due to oversight. A simple mistake shouldn't result in disproportionate consequences (loss of decades of revenue). At the same time other works that are no longer available on the market will be prevented from entering public ___domain by companies that just renew everything.
So in other words, renewing should cost a decent amount of money, so that not every work is worth renewing?
I don't really see the fact that people will let things enter the public ___domain sooner as a downside, even if it would (theoretically) have earned them more money. If they aren't organized enough to renew the copyright, why would they be organized enough to actually use the work?
I don't really see a big problem. You register a copyright within a year of publication. The only one who can renew it is you or someone you designate, which must have a paper trail. You supply contact info. If you cannot be contacted by that contact info, copyright claims for your work are not enforceable.
If you can't be bothered to do this, why should you be entitled to copyright protection?
The legal system has well-established means for dealing with the loss of important papers like titles, deeds, contracts, wills, power of attorneys, passports, birth certificates, receipts, etc.
For example, you can make a certified copy, and deposit the copy in a safe deposit box or with your lawyer.
Right, but let's say you didn't do that because you weren't well-versed in the legal system, so all you did was register your copyright, then transfer the registration to your friend, who then stashed the documentation in a filing cabinet.
Should you have to be an expert in the legal system to avoid losing your intellectual property when your house burns down?
Like I said, there are established legal precedents for what to do if you burn your papers.
Besides, the whole reason lawyers exist is so that people who aren't experts in the legal system can hire one. You're not going to get very far in business without discovering you need the services of a lawyer and a CPA. Often the hard way.
I recall the actor Will Smith (Fresh Prince) who discovered the hard way that he needed the services of a CPA.
"Let's take a system that works today and impose an additional paper trail, where you lose all your rights if you lose the paper trail."
"Won't that penalize people who don't have a lawyer and who lose their paper trail?"
"Tough, people need to learn to use lawyers"
In fact, now that I right that out, that's an extremely antagonistic approach to take and it punishes the least privileged people (e.g. the people who can't afford lawyers), while doing absolutely nothing for the giant corporations who have lawyers on retainer and will naturally have a process in place to retain proper copies of the paper trail always.
> Instead, I think what we need is a process for the USPTO to grant third parties permission to use a work when a good faith effort has been made to determine and contact the copyright holder. In my view, this would involve involve paying of statutory license fees to the USPTO who will hold them in escrow.
In this case isn't the government stealing from the copyright holder and/or public ___domain? If I use a presumably abandoned work as a jumping off point to a billion dollar franchise and then the original copyright holder comes out of the woodwork to claim 50% of everything I've made will the government escrow cover that? What if two people come out claiming to own the copyright? This solution seems to have all of the problems of the current system and offer little to fix the problem.
I agree that the old paper recordkeeping was not scalable to the modern world, but an online registry of works doesn't seem out of the question. It's exactly the sort of thing the web should be good for. Renewals could also be done online. For easy lookup a standardized copyright numbering system could be optionally added to each work similar to an ISBN.
The hardest problem would be validating that people actually have rights to what they claim on the service. There would undoubtedly be a cottage industry of people seeking out forgotten works and registering them under their name for the license fees. A modest fee for renewal should help reduce that problem and also stiff penalties for knowingly stealing other peoples work. The fees would be used to run the massive server farm necessary for keeping all of those records available. I would also suggest that a modest copyright term, say 15 years or so would automatically be applied to any work and you would only need to register if you're planning to renew the work after the original term is up. We don't need people writing bots that automatically register every forum post or email or google query they make, because there will definitely be people who try that shit just to troll for licensing dollars.
> If I use a presumably abandoned work as a jumping off point to a billion dollar franchise and then the original copyright holder comes out of the woodwork to claim 50% of everything I've made will the government escrow cover that?
It would be the same as any other statutory licensing system, where once the government grants you permission to use the work, and you pay the statutory fees, the copyright holder has no claim to any rights in your derivative works. The only right they have at that point is to the fees, and it is between them and the government as to whether they are the rightful copyright holder, no reason to involve you.
Again, I think this would work smoother if all works had say 20 years of full copyright protection, just like today, and then another 20 subject to statutory licensing. Then in that second period there would be no dispute over whether you, the third party, had the right to use the work, the only dispute is over who gets the statutory fees, and the government agrees to be the middle man in situations where that is not clear, so that uncertainty of ownership won't stifle use.
> In this case isn't the government stealing from the copyright holder and/or public ___domain?
Stealing implies that either the copyright holder or the public have some inherit ownership right in the work, however their rights are only what the law grants them. In this system, works would not enter the public ___domain until after the second period is over, so the public ___domain has no rightful claim to them (orphaned or not). In the second phase of copyright, the holder would no longer have absolute right to control the work, and only limited rights in setting prices. Anyone could redistribute or make derivative works (subject to trademark law, etc), as long as they paid the statutory fees. If a copyright holder abandons the work, then you cannot blame the government for treating the fees similar to other abandoned property.
Grant short-term copyright for any written works, but require registration and periodic renewal for longer duration, with increasing fees for subsequent renewals.
That's kind of hard to measure though. It would require a LOT of government auditing to catch cheaters. Like Hollywood movies would never have to pay to be renewed because they never make any net revenue.
The copyright system was never intended to serve the common good. Rather, its basis was the "Statute of Anne". It was about censorship and regulation of the book trade.
