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Kali, please calm down and try not to make it personal.
There is a concept in the law called "the reasonable man". When the day comes that society/the government/the law agrees with my general principles, the details of whether a copyright holder is doing enough to maintain his copyright can be worked out. One method is to examine whether the effort of the author was made in good faith.
I mentioned a couple of months ago, and it has been picked up by others, that there is no legitimate Perry Mason eBook. I understand that there are darknet Perry Mason titles.
The concept of copyright means that the author can go to court and get a cease and desist order, as well as get paid damages. I'm saying that the court should look at the efforts of the Perry Mason copyright holder (of course IMO all except those written in the last fourteen years of Garner's life should have entered the public domain upon his death), and see if any efforts have been made in good faith. If no good faith efforts to publish the book were made, then the copyright holder would receive zero damages because he suffered no loss. Use it or lose it.
I don't see how my proposal would strip author's of their royalties as you allege. As I mentioned above, the govt could include in the law a minimum royalty to be paid to the author which would be a healthy percentage.
Like other apologists for the book publishing industry here, you make some rosy projections (in this case 2017) for the future actions of the publishers. I'm not so trusting. I can tell you for a fact that there is a lot of good jazz that the record companies have never bothered to release on CD, and CDs have been around for 25 years!
My guess is that the book and music industries have this in common: There is a great deal of art from the 20th century that is now owned by large corporations who have little or no interest in making that art available to the public. They are focused on the smash hits. They are bean counters who have no passion for the art.
I don't object to bean counters going for the home run. But when it comes to their back catalogues (which they have acquired through mergers and acquisitions, and which the personnel/decision makers of today had nothing to do with the making of), I say "Lead, follow or get out of the way." Either release the material, or don't stand in the way of someone who will.
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