Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
It is, actually. It's usually not that the work is lost as such, there are copies available in a library or somewhere. You just can't buy new ones, because nobody can be bothered to make any, or, as is frequently the case, nobody knows who the heirs are or who really owns the rights. So nobody dares touch this work for fear of suddenly being sued after all. This does't help anybody.
The EU has a new project underway, named " Arrow" that tries to deal with such rights' ownership issues and orphaned works. It's early days yet, though. |
Production of ebooks is a possible availability solution where the copyright owner is known, but yes, orphaned items - having no known owner - are more of a problem, but not necessarily one that requires changes to copyright timing. It would only require provisions to deal with that situation. My point was that the complaints being made here are about the length of time of copyright, but that seems misdirected, the real problem is the work not being available even for purchase. So something like the Arrow project (thanks for that link) - something that tackles the actual problem - is the sort of sort of thing that needs to be studied.