A more detailed example: I was scanning some family photos (for backup/archive/family use, no publishing as of now) and noticed that several have small stickers marked with copyright notices of the small town photography company that took them. I asked my family members and they said the company is no longer in business, but I worry that those photos will never be able to be published until after well over 100 years after it was taken. How can I track down the copyright for such photos?
The law should provide a mechanism here, but does not.
Unless they took the photographs for free, the copyright notices they put on them are fraudulent.
edit: If you are working as a employee (think W-2), it is different. Just hiring someone to take pictures (think 1099/contractor), I think is not covered under the same rules.
The long answer: not unless transfer of copyright was explicitly part of the agreement.
Slightly longer answer:
In most cases nowadays when you hire a photographer, the photographer retains the copyright and will ask a considerable amount to transfer those rights to you. What you’re essentially are paying for is for them to take the photos (cheapest option), for them to print the photos after taking them (slightly more expensive), or for them to hand you the digital photo files (expensive).
Neither of those options transfer copyright, as copyright is in principle granted to the person who takes the photos. Wedding photographers are notorious for monetizing every aspect of the job (I say this without value judgement) for example, where you pay a fee to cover the event, a fee for printing photos and a fee for receiving digital copies (because you don’t have to pay them for printing).
Problem for the next game was the music. The original author commissioned about a dozen of artists, problem is, he didn't own the rights, only a licence for having the music in the original game. So the translator had to find a way to get in touch with all of the rights-holders and negotiate a license for the translation with each one. Because he is just one man, it was simply too much work and he abandoned the project.
It is actually a rather common situation. It may result in cancelled projects, changing the music with a varying level of success or just removing it altogether.
“WKRP in Cincinnati” has so much music in the episodes that the licensing costs to stream it today would be prohibitive.
We have entered 1984 where history is mutable.
The music was such a part of the show. Now it seems impossible to get the original series as it aired at the time.
Even the pirates have failed me in this instance.
>We have entered 1984 where history is mutable.
It's terrible. I worry about the same thing for children playing online games nowadays as well.
Once the servers inevitably go offline, they will never be able to replay their childhood games.
This is our cultural heritage, our shared memory. Gone.
That's the one: https://www.senscritique.com/contact/Saffran_Prod/507351
Note that an English translation of both games exist under the name "When they Cry", available on Steam, among others. It is actually a reedition of the game and not translated by the same person.
1) It might be hard for the rights holder to assert their copyright at a later stage, if they lack the evidence to do so at the outset 2) any damages awarded might be mitigated by the attempts to search for the rights holder, especially if the ‘true’ owner was contacted at some stage. Seems more likely they’d be compensatory as opposed to punitive
I know this isn’t the prevailing legal practice, but as a lawyer, the lack of a willingness to be bold in these legal situations has always surprised me
Perhaps the tail risk of being slapped down is just too large
I’ve always wondered about a business model of searching for such works, undertaking a bona-fide effort to find the owner, and then just selling it as your own if one can’t be identified. (Perhaps with a war chest kept in reserve for the rare instances licensing fees are demanded later). ‘Copyright squatting’ if you will
In a sane, rational world that would probably be the case. Too bad we don't live on one!
You're an attorney and don't know that copyright infringement is a strict liability offense?
Thing is most people won't even think to apply. That's why the copyright is granted automatically, with an option to renew for a longer term afterwards. An important distinction from patents. this was one of the earliest revisions to to protect he unaware, since consulting a lawyer under the original system would be too late.
Good. As intended.
I don't see how this improves on the current model.
I don't even want a copyright on this post, but I've got one.
Thats my issue. I see it as the public domain shrinking immensively. Things posted without vetting attached will 99% not be anything worth stealing and 1% spammed as badly as a meme if it's semi-interesting. And Disney can still lobby congress under this model to expand copyright.
What really improves here? It doesn't even benefit open source development.
With affirmative registration we can trivially prove/disprove whether a specific work is registered under copyright. It also greatly expands the works in the public domain.
> It doesn't even benefit open source development.
Sure it does. Code by default is usable by anyone. A registry of copywritten code would appear which we could easily cross-reference.
>Code by default is usable by anyone.
"by default". Any serious entrepreneur wouldn't fall on the default to begin with if the potential losses are that large.
> registry of copywritten code would appear which we could easily cross-reference.
Sounds like a good recipe for more Oracle vs Google battles in my eyes. We just have a reference on what NOT to write. Now there will be discretion on if you just happened to write this kind of code or if you took X+1 lines of a code base when X is allowed. Very useless metrics for a productive piece of software, but the kind thst will absolutely be used by courts.
Huh? It's no change at all for someone who wants to retain copyright. They would just need to file to register.
> We just have a reference on what NOT to write.
You may be confused. This is how it already works. No change.
Even more importantly, the vast majority of copyright claims aren't litigated in a court at all. Most are handled by extrajudicial processes such as the DMCA takedown process. You do not have to register to issue a DMCA takedown.
Furthermore, right now people just register before bringing their suit because they have 5 years to do so. The proposal above is a lot different than what you're suggesting and the law doesn't work as you're describing.
It is. You don't seem to know what you are talking about. https://www.afslaw.com/perspectives/alerts/supreme-court-cop...).
>Even more importantly, the vast majority of copyright claims aren't litigated in a court at all. Most are handled by extrajudicial processes such as the DMCA takedown process. You do not have to register to issue a DMCA takedown.
Service providers don't take things down in the absence of any proof of a copyright.
>Furthermore, right now people just register before bringing their suit because they have 5 years to do so. The proposal above is a lot different than what you're suggesting and the law doesn't work as you're describing.
You have unlimited time to register. It's not 5 years. You just need to register prior to bringing a suit.
It is not, as explained by your own link. You should read your own link. Registering makes it enormously easier and nearly everyone will register prior to bringing a suit, but it is absolutely not required -- again, as your link clearly explains.
Furthermore, your point is academic because what people do in practice is simply register just prior to bringing a suit (after the infringement takes place)
> Service providers don't take things down in the absence of any proof of a copyright.
Yes they do - in fact the DMCA requires them to do so.
> You have unlimited time to register. It's not 5 years. You just need to register prior to bringing a suit.
The 5 years matters, but yes, this is why your point about registering is entirely without merit.
Oh so you're making a point about the narrow exceptions that generally don't apply? I'm not going to engage in a bad faith conversation like this. If you are suing over a US work, the only way to bring suit is to have a registration, been refused a registration, or, as you seem to think is an incredibly important distinction, is a VARA work. Do you litigate copyrights? Where exactly are you coming from on this?
>Yes they do - in fact the DMCA requires them to do so.
No, they wont in the absence proof of ownership of a work which is conventionally reflected in a registered copyright.
>The 5 years matters, but yes, this is why your point about registering is entirely without merit.
No, it doesn't.
Having an easily accessible registry of copyrighted code would make it easy to "patent troll" any open source projects.
The reverse is also true, but open source projects have much less money to dedicate to legal battles.
The difference here is that the vast majority of works would suddenly be free from this system and unavailable for any type of IP litigation.
It means your post, above, isn't automatically copyrighted, and the public domain expands massively. I don't even want a copyright on this post, but I've got one.
Copyright is several times too long, but making it more like patents wouldn't help at all. On the contrary.
1) Patents can cover broad topics. Copyright doesn't have a similar standard (from what I've seen). You can't just copyright all images of a sunset, but your specific image can be copyrighted. See the EFFs article for examples of broad patents: https://www.eff.org/issues/resources-patent-troll-victims
2) Patents have a complex application process. Copyright shouldn't require this level of complexity as the technology exists to detect similar or exact copies and can be streamlined for everyone (think of a simple web form with your information, copy of the work, etc).
- Trivial for Microsoft
- Painful for a typical HN contributor
- Impossible for anyone earning minimum wage
I think a better standard might be "actively trying to commercialize."
[1] Or it is truly worthless; in which case, what do you need to retain the copyright for?
OR it was a novel that did not sell well in the first printing but had a small devoted clique and then some years later starts selling enough to make $120,000 a year.
OR it didn't get taken up by many people but now there is some interest in your work so people are talking about potentially buying the rights for Netflix but of course you have to pay 65K to make sure you have those rights to sell, which is money you don't have, so you need to take out a loan in order to potentially profit from your labor.
OR you're Peter Beagle https://www.cbr.com/the-last-unicorn-peter-s-beagle-regains-...
The fact is that there are a million ways in which a class of entrepreneurs make money off of their work, even though, like most entrepreneurs they fail, and whenever HN starts talking copyright there are always people who probably make significantly more per year than the average writer does at writing who want to make sure writers make even less.
It's weird that HN often loves entrepreneurs, and wants to make things easier for them - but not writers.
Aside from that this scheme, as most other fix copyright schemes, will not be taken up by most other countries (other than U.S I mean) as they tend to have a "copyright exists because creators have moral rights to ownership of their work" theory of copyright and not the whole "copyright exists to foster innovation" theory.
As other countries will not follow the U.S you would have what you often have today, things in Public Domain in U.S and not in other countries and so you cannot freely make derivative works for an international audience at least as you would be sued.
Further, you are still free to take that risk and pay the 64k. Just like you are free to buy/sell that bitcoin for $x. That is your risk to take.
OR one can make an argument that has nothing to do with any of the things I commented and tick an item off the HN scorecard!
>Further, you are still free to take that risk
Probably if they were smart they would just forego the risk of creating something in the first place as it would be a world with much less chance of a payoff.
Do people create things on the basis that there might be a payoff 16 years down the line? Did David Bowie write his last album on the basis of how how much money he'd make?
The first year is $1, is that a risk? 2nd year is $2. If you written a book or whatever I would think you've got some insight by then whether it's worth paying the $4.
And the Shakespeare reference is relevant because where do you want the cutoff? Life+70 is nonsensical, unless you're arguing for perpetual copywrite you need a line somewhere. Where do you want to draw the line?
Life + 70 is based on the concept of copyright outside of the U.S which doesn't think copyright exists to promote the arts but rather because if you create something you have a right to how it is disposed. All of these clever American solutions to copyright that would fix how it works in the U.S are not going to affect how it works outside the U.S and thus Life + 70 is more in keeping with the non-American conception of the purpose of copyright.
Outside the U.S pay 1 dollar to own something you made is nonsensical.
>Outside the U.S pay 1 dollar to own something you made is nonsensical
Define 'own'. You aren't paying to own the thing, you're paying for legal protections.
This is the issue with intellectual 'property' it isn't property, it doesn't require an owner, you aren't deprived of the use of your work if I 'steal' it. You will always own a book in the sense that if somebody copies it, they need to give you credit. That concept of 'ownership' makes at least as much sense as yours.
Define I am not talking about my opinions about stuff, I'm talking about what the legal concepts are regarding copyright in the EU.
The EU is a place that is not America. The EU has more stringent copyright rules for non-corporate copyright holders (where it is 70 years after death of longest living creator, if Steamboat Willie was owned by its creators instead of Walt Disney corporation it would still not be Public Domain in Europe)
>Yes because the US had no influence on the current copywrite system...
I do not believe the EU has been influenced by the U.S to make a copyright system that is more strict than the copyright system of the U.S. It makes more sense to suggest their copyright system is more strict because they have a different model of what a copyright system is for that would argue for a stricter system of copyright.
So in the hypotheticals we're discussing, why are you pointing out it isn't compatible with the legal concepts of the current system, unless you want to keep those concepts?
1. Even if only limited to U.S extremely unlikely to ever be implemented.
2. because of EU and other regional differences regarding copyright's purposes your hypothetical has actually no chance of ever being enacted outside the U.S
3. if your hypothetical was enacted inside U.S but not outside it would not solve the issue I find most irritating, near impossibility for people who do not have a team for dealing with these things to figure out if something is actually Public Domain or not?!?
I recently had Google tell me it thought a video was copyrighted but it is definitely public domain in U.S but they might be right because hey some of the people who worked on the movie the video was taken from died in 1960s - so when does it run out of copyright well I can't track that down so I better not use that for what I want to do with it.
Lord Dunsany died in 1957, I have a lot of uses for his stuff lined up but I better not do anything about it until 2027.
My hypothetical is bring systems better in alignment - hopefully making EU more limited like U.S and thus people who want to use something to make art etc. can figure out exactly if it is in PD or not simply. Because that is the real copyright problem holding back small creators.
In the context of reusing parts of movies it is difficult to figure out if it is in PD or not because the +70 years applies to major creators - is that director, producer, major actor?
I have a great use for Beat The Devil - that's in public domain in U.S because copyright not renewed - but not sure if that is really the case in European countries. Everything I do to research suggests it is - but... it's too much of a mess to realistically be absolutely certain. Probably is because surely the copyright must have been owned by United Artists so 70 years from 2023 at worst - maybe... but I mean John Huston died in 1987, in some places it was released in 1955 - so if 70 years from public release that's 2025? If 70 years from Huston's death forget about it.
However, a mechanism which works for Star Wars and Mickey Mouse, but not for a short story, a play, or a specialized piece of software written by a single individual which e.g. generates $20k / year, doesn't work for me.
The length of the copyright shouldn't be proportional to the effort invested in the work. If a book my parents wrote is supposed to move into the public domain, so should Star Trek: The Original Series.
That doesn't preclude mechanisms like:
- Required (free) registration. I go to a government website, get a code, and from there on, it says: Copyright (c) 2022. Registration number 5f902b0a-f56c-402a-95fd-47f12f40e538
- Required (free) maintenance. I need to renew this to maintain copyright.
- Anyone can look up the copyright owner (even though it might be Copyrights By Proxy, which is okay too -- anonymity is valuable).
- Reasonable limits on duration.
This handles your forum post, abandoned works, and to be frank, a majority of works under copyright. Most things move into the public domain. However, most things isn't the same as everything.
I'd also be supportive of a radical expansion of fair use doctrine.
although I'm not agreeing with them they are not really beating up a strawman - in the EU it's life+70, because it has a different motivation for copyright than the U.S - this means that you may think something is in public domain but then you find out it isn't really because the person who made it in 1925 died in 1970.
My personal standpoint is that copywrite should be the minimum necessary to encourage and allow people to create works.
That would suggest to me somewhere south of 10 years, possibly varying with the specific art form.
The doubling fee thing is somewhat appealling because it acts as a tax on valuable works.
If Disney wants to spend millions to protect Mickey mouse then there is that option, yes the public domain loses, but the tax acts as compensation for that.
I don't see why this doesn't work for the little guy. If they want to pay the fees they can, the point is people are only going to pay fees if it's worth it. That applies to Disney or Joe blogs. If it isn't worth $1/$2/$4 why should you get to stop everyone else using it?
* I'd be supportive with 10 years for software, articles (newspaper or scientific journal), and similar things which go out-of-date quickly.
* I would be supportive of 10-20 years for things which make most of the profit in the first few years, such as movies.
* I'd be supportive of 20-30 years for music, where it often really does take a while to build up an audience and to cover costs.
* I'd be supportive of the lesser of the authors' life and 50 years for things like books. A lot of books take a long time before they begin generating any sort of reasonable returns.
* I'd be supportive of longer periods for things which are CC-BY-SA, GPL, and similar licenses, which aren't as burdensome as All Rights Reserved, and where the copyright has a motive beyond profit.
The little guy won't be able to afford this for more than 7-11 years. The big guy will be able to do so much longer. I'd actually rather flip it around so the little guy has longer copyright than megacorps.
Right, so where's the social value in it? The work has proven to be of little value. What's in it for the people who extend copyright to keep giving it to you even though they don't really care for what you have to offer?
Moreover, while your entire story has proved a complete and utter failure, what if just one page of your story has tremendous value for the next author who knows how to add a more compelling page 2? Why do we want to hold back that human progress so you can sit on something that doesn't even make you any money?
>Moreover, while your entire story has proved a complete and utter failure
I'm thinking you probably don't know anything about the pricing of short stories?
At any rate in the example given I supposed that a short story can earn higher rates than normal rates for short story publication which might, if you are lucky, be somewhere around a few thousand dollars at publication in magazine form, some more thousands at winning an award, and then in a collection of short stories where it might reliably earn 10000 dollars a year (for its share of the whole collection length of something), note - that would be an extremely successful short story as far as short stories go (without selling media rights)
Obviously this varies depending on where you sell your stuff, and if you earn money for awards.
Let's say you sell to the New Yorker http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-new-y... so you earn about 7,500 for the short story.
The award that has paid out the most for a short story ever evidently paid 30 thousand pounds https://lithub.com/read-the-story-that-just-won-the-biggest-...
You may not know this but very few stories win awards, awards being structured to be relatively rare. Obviously if someone has not one an award for their short story you may consider that their work has been a complete and utter failure, but even so...
let us consider if someone sold to the New Yorker, which hopefully you will agree is likely to be one of the better paying markets and evidently by your calculation one of the short story markets that publishes things that are not complete and utter failures (because it pays more than others right?), and if they then won the highest paying award ever they would have another 30,000, now assuming this short story is part of a collection of short stories and the author is really popular I think we can say this short story in the collection makes about 10,000 per year.
in 16 years that is - for one of the most successful short stories in the world - 197,500 dollars.
on edit: I really find it amusing that HN of all places really wants to limit how people can make money on what is an entrepreneurial activity - sitting down and writing a story and then trying to sell it.
In democratic places, copyright is extended for the benefit of the population at large. That does not necessarily mean fostering human progress, but it does mean something that benefits the population as a whole. Copyright can be taken away if the people at large don't see some kind benefit.
> I'm thinking you probably don't know anything about the pricing of short stories?
If exchanged for $1 per copy, you have a theoretical ~$8 billion dollar market. $65k is chump change in comparison. Hell, make it 1¢ – that's still $80 million. If you have not captured anywhere close to those numbers, you have either failed to do your work justice in distribution or it is actually worthless. Either way, in that state what is the benefit to you holding it back?
> Let's say you sell to the New Yorker http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-new-y... so you earn about 7,500 for the short story.
But in that case you can sell the copyright, so they would inherit the copyright cost. Whether or not they see $65k worth of copyright value is up to them. It would no longer be your burden if you return to your minimum wage job after the sale.
> I really find it amusing that HN of all places really wants to limit how people can make money on what is an entrepreneurial activity
I find it amusing that someone, on HN of all places, falls down to basic logic. An idea posted on an internet forum does not imply one's wants or desires.
Moreover, for practical purposes, why would you even talk about what you actually want? The thing you have chosen as your want is where you will have already put in the most thought effort. What more are you going to learn once you have settled on something? The things you don't want are going to provide a much more interesting discussion and opportunities to learn.
>If exchanged for $1 per copy, you have a theoretical ~$8 billion dollar market. $65k is chump change in comparison. Hell, make it 1¢ – that's still $80 million. If you have not captured anywhere close to those numbers, you have either failed to do your work justice in distribution or it is actually worthless.
OK, well thanks for the confirmation.
>I find it amusing that someone, on HN of all places, falls down to basic logic.
Hey! Me too! We do have something in common after all!!
Glad we both recognize that short stories are effectively worthless. Even the most recognized short story I know of sold for, according to your figures, basically nothing. Why are we trying to keep that under a super important lock and key again?
> Hey! Me too! We do have something in common after all!!
I know. You already told us in the previous comment that you were amused by it. Thanks for telling us again, I guess.
This would drastically change our current copyright regime.
As it stands, everything you write has automatic copyright, and doesn't require even the smallest, brokest artist to do anything—or pay anything—in order to ensure that their creations cannot profit others without their consent.
Requiring every work to be registered in order to be eligible for copyright would essentially change our system from a default of "assume anything you find is under copyright, get permission from the creator to use it" to "assume anything you find is free for the taking, and if the creator did register it they'll have to come after you."
In other words, it would mean that anything belonging to big corporate media like Disney and Hasbro would be near-automatically protected, while small, independent artists would be massively more screwed than they are today, with their creations basically being assumed to be available for anyone capable of monetizing it against its creator's will, medium, large, or megacorporation, to profit off of to their shriveled hearts' content.
I also think that some compromise needs to be made. Saying that all small, independent artists would be "massively more screwed" doesn't give them much credit. Having their work protected and documented as such should give them more protections if someone infringes on their work. A fast and simple process can be designed to allow everyone to register their works without limiting it to large corporations.
In other words, we basically had that and politicians created the current system of copyright out of it thanks to 200 years or so of lobbying from special interests.
This is where Disney gets a special achievement award.
1. Big players can afford protection even when a product isn't profitable - Disney may lock things up to claim a catalog even if most, independently, isn't worth much.
2. What defines a work? For a TV series, is it the entire show, each season, or each episode?
3. Some works exist in much higher quantity. Ie, photography vs video games. A photographer would have to increase their prices dramatically to retain copyright for even a short period.
I am all for copyright reform, but this option doesn't work. I'm a much bigger fan of the idea of everything being public domain PERIOD with the arts being publicly funded - Ben Jordan has a great video defending this idea I can't link to easily while at work.
$1 doubling each year would be over $1 million after just 20 years, and over $1 billion after 30 years. Out of the big catalog of circa 30-year-old Disney content, maybe The Lion King still brings in enough revenue to justify a billion dollar yearly copyright fee, but most other stuff from that era sure won't.
> What defines a work? For a TV series, is it the entire show, each season, or each episode?
Now this is the billion-dollar question (pun absolutely intended).
Often when I see posts like this, I wonder what the posters actually know about copyright.
In order to bring any copyright action in the US, your work needs to be registered, which costs a bit more than $5, and also requires sending deposit copies to the the copyright office to be maintained in the library of congress.
>3) Everything under the sun is copyrighted for absurd lengths of time. Does a macaroni art piece I made when I was in 1st grade need copyright for 70 years after I'm gone? I don't think so, but I understand that the newest movies need some protection.
Who cares? Honestly - what difference does it make? Has your macaroni art piece caused unnecessary litigation? are people afraid to make other macaroni sculptures, knowing that you made yours? What have you actually thought about copyright, its incentives, structures, and the creative market, if you are seriously making this assertion in the face of these obvious questions?
1) when copyright ends for a work and a source to compare claims against
2) Orphaned works without known owners that are nearly unusable until expiration
3) Everything under the sun is copyrighted for absurd lengths of time. Does a macaroni art piece I made when I was in 1st grade need copyright for 70 years after I'm gone? I don't think so, but I understand that the newest movies need some protection.
4) Archiving of expired works would be easier