Comment by gherkin0
10 years ago
> Effectively, you'd be saying that if someone isn't exercising their rights under copyright with sufficient vigor by making something available for sale, they'd lose those rights.
Couldn't there instead be some kind of default and compulsory licensing terms for abandoned works, rather than the original rightsholder losing them? So, in this case, for example, the game could be republished, and Warner/Fox/Activision could split a standard 5-10% share of the profits if they prove their rights (having forfeited an opportunity for a better deal by not bothering to clarify things sooner).
The issue with orphan works (which overlap with abandonware) it that it's often unclear who the rights holder or holders is and, sometimes, what other third-party IP rights are involved. For example, in the case of software, are there licensed libraries that would need to be stripped out. As companies shut down, get bought, sell assets, etc. figuring out ownership and rights can be difficult.
With orphan works specifically, the concern that I've heard expressed by some photographers is that companies will spend exactly 10 seconds trying to track down the copyright holder before deciding it's orphaned and using the work as they see fit.
>With orphan works specifically, the concern that I've heard expressed by some photographers is that companies will spend exactly 10 seconds trying to track down the copyright holder before deciding it's orphaned and using the work as they see fit.
Isn't that the point of a national copyright registry? I understand that you don't have to register a copyright to be protected by it, and I also understand that it's not desirable to register every work individually, but making use of a copyright registry would alleviate this particular problem.
> With orphan works specifically, the concern that I've heard expressed by some photographers is that companies will spend exactly 10 seconds trying to track down the copyright holder before deciding it's orphaned and using the work as they see fit.
I think a prerequisite to any kind of default licensing would need to be a documented good-faith effort to find the actual rightsholder. Futhermore, if they can't find them, I think they should have to put the default licensing fees into escrow, so it's not they could avoid paying anything.
In most cases, there is no "default licensing fee." Mechanicals in music are really the exception rather than the rule. (And this is probably less of an issue with music than elsewhere in any case because of the royalty clearing organizations.)