Copyright Orphans
The problem of “copyright orphans” is the focus of a legal case and article in Wired. Originally, copyright protected a work for 28 years, and only if it was registered. It could be renewed once for an additional 28 years. Over the last 28 years, however, copyright law has been changed three times, and now copyright extends to 75 years after the death of the author, and no registration needs to take place.
This is a problem because it makes it extraordinarily difficult to find out if a work has fallen into the public domain. If the author hasn’t registered the work, it can be difficult or impossible to track them down. And since the copyright doesn’t relate to the publication date, there is no way to know just by looking at the age of the work whether or not the copyright has expired. The law was also made retroactive, so much of the 20th century falls into this confusing mess.
This has generated a world of “orphans”, or works that have little or no economic value, but potentially great educational or historical value. Since the authors can’t be located, they can’t be passed into the public domain. Even worse, the works may be lost or destroyed before being duplicated. Especially in this day and age of digital archiving, it seems amazing that we have such huge bodies of material that are blocked from being made available through digital means. (Like I’ve said before, it’s not all on the Internet, and much of it won’t be in our lifetimes!)