Where have I been?
When I first heard about the proposed changes to the US copyright law, I thought it was just another internet rumor. I was wrong.
Before 1978 US copyright was an opt in system (unless we go back to the first English copyright laws in which case it was mandatory– because the monarchy wanted to know who to blame for certain works produced from that new fangled printing press.) In 1978 artists and writers were given an opt out system, meaning that from the time a piece was created (unless for commission) it automatically belonged to the creator of the work. Sonny Bono did something too, then he died– you’ll have to look it up on Wikipedia because I’m on a roll now.
Jump to now, where there is a legitimate problem with orphaned works, creative works that have no known copyright holder or the known copyright holder is dead without any apparent heirs but do not fall into the current definition of public domain. In an ideal world we (the public) would be able to hunt people down and ask for their permission or give fair use attribution, but this is often a less than ideal world so someone came up with a truly idiotic idea as a solution.
That idiotic idea is the revocation of automatic protection under copyright statutes, unless the creator(s) of a work submit it to a private registry within a period of time and goes easy on copyright infringers that can claim that they tried to find the original owner of a piece.
So if Mary wants to copyright her shawl pattern, under the proposed legislation she needs to pay a fee and register it with a private company (that as yet does not exist) and even if she does that an infringer can come along, create an obviously derivative work, and claim that they tried to track Mary down, but couldn’t so they aren’t liable for any damages to the value of Mary’s work. And if Mary’s name is on the shawl pattern but she didn’t register it (to a private company that does not exist yet) then she’s basically given it into the public domain as an orphaned work.
I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but we’re primarily a service and entertainment supported country here in the US and this legislation would make it even easier to reduce the value of creative works by bootleggers and not very nice people.
Some links:
