Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
However, they're not called "orphan works" for nothing. I note that all of the posts here refer to copyright holders rather than authors. I shed no tears for copyright holders who are not actively promoting the works. Nowadays a work can be posted at Amazon as an eBook for little investment. Use it or lose it.
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In a lot of cases, nobody knows who the copyright holder is. If the author's alive, he or she may not know what the contract status of the work is. Or may not have access to a copy of the work itself--he wrote some poems in college and submitted them to a magazine, but doesn't have a copy to re-release. Which doesn't mean he's okay with someone else selling a collection of "Best Poems From 70's Magazines" without his consent.
Orphan may not be abandoned; it may mean "rights are unclear."
If the author isn't alive, the heirs may not even know they own the copyright(s). For example--my paternal grandmother died in 1978. If, the year before she died, she published a booklet, "On being divorced in the 60's," and it was discovered today--who owns the copyright?
She had three sons, who are all still alive. They have six living children, two each. I don't know how many living grandchildren there are (I'm not in contact with my cousins in different states); I just know it's "several." Somewhere between 15 and 30 potential heirs--at least one of whom I know was given up for adoption in infancy; does he have the potential of holding that copyright? Or part of it?
If someone wanted to publish my grandmother's (hypothetical) booklet, plenty of people in the family would insist that we have the rights to profits from it. But who controls? There was no will, or if there was, it certainly didn't mention copyrights.
If it got published without permission, any of those up-to-thirty people might file a lawsuit to claim infringement, and be granted a whopping ruling. If the publisher wants to get permission first, does he need to get a signed consent form from all of them, including the children? If my uncle decides to republish it, can my father & other uncle sue him? Can I?
Copyright "Life+X" law is a MESS.