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charleski · 03-27-2011, 09:23 PM

I still haven't seen any convincing argument against a requirement for registration in order to maintain rights in a published work. Other forms of IP require it, and for two hundred years copyright did as well, so there is no 'natural' endowment to be considered*.

Questions of cost are a red herring, since, in the US at least, the majority of commercially-viable copyrightable material is initially registered anyway in order to qualify for statutory damages; adding a requirement for renewal would be trivial for most professionals, and would only burden those who fail to keep track of their work. Since the aim is to discourage creators from abandoning their works and making it difficult to clear the rights for them, this would have exactly the desired effect. There would be some added cost, but several mechanisms have been proposed in which that cost would be shared between those who benefit from this system - those who wish to use orphaned works in commercial ventures, the creators (who would benefit from a system in which licensing was more generally amenable) and the public at large.

There's certainly room for compromise, and I'm open to the idea that copyright should not require registration for an initial period (say 20 years or so), since the creator is likely to remain vested in his or her creation during that period. But extension beyond that should require an affirmative declaration by the creator that they haven't abandoned their work and are willing to maintain contact details for anyone wishing to license it.

The purpose is simple: the preservation of our heritage. The larger the base, the higher we can build, and it's far from unknown for works to be disregarded shortly after publication, only to attain far higher significance at a later date. Our current technologies preserve through copying, and indeed the vast bulk of our repository of culture comes from copies - the original manuscript of Sophocles' plays was lost aeons ago. The purpose of copyright is to aid the progress of culture, and it should not be allowed to retard it.

*I'm perfectly aware that there are extremists who aver that there should be no distinction at all between real and intellectual property, and that the book they wrote through the sweat of their brow deserves the same protection as a house they might build with the sweat of their back. Their arguments are nonsense, however, and skip lightly over the fact that anyone may live in a house, yet only a minority of the world's population would even understand the squiggles they make on a page, let alone find any value in them. All intellectual property is fundamentally derivative, and only has value in the context of the culture in which it was born.

03-27-2011, 09:23 PM	#81
charleski Wizard Posts: 1,196 Karma: 1281258 Join Date: Sep 2009 Device: PRS-505	I still haven't seen any convincing argument against a requirement for registration in order to maintain rights in a published work. Other forms of IP require it, and for two hundred years copyright did as well, so there is no 'natural' endowment to be considered. Questions of cost are a red herring, since, in the US at least, the majority of commercially-viable copyrightable material is initially registered anyway* in order to qualify for statutory damages; adding a requirement for renewal would be trivial for most professionals, and would only burden those who fail to keep track of their work. Since the aim is to discourage creators from abandoning their works and making it difficult to clear the rights for them, this would have exactly the desired effect. There would be some added cost, but several mechanisms have been proposed in which that cost would be shared between those who benefit from this system - those who wish to use orphaned works in commercial ventures, the creators (who would benefit from a system in which licensing was more generally amenable) and the public at large. There's certainly room for compromise, and I'm open to the idea that copyright should not require registration for an initial period (say 20 years or so), since the creator is likely to remain vested in his or her creation during that period. But extension beyond that should require an affirmative declaration by the creator that they haven't abandoned their work and are willing to maintain contact details for anyone wishing to license it. The purpose is simple: the preservation of our heritage. The larger the base, the higher we can build, and it's far from unknown for works to be disregarded shortly after publication, only to attain far higher significance at a later date. Our current technologies preserve through copying, and indeed the vast bulk of our repository of culture comes from copies - the original manuscript of Sophocles' plays was lost aeons ago. The purpose of copyright is to aid the progress of culture, and it should not be allowed to retard it. *I'm perfectly aware that there are extremists who aver that there should be no distinction at all between real and intellectual property, and that the book they wrote through the sweat of their brow deserves the same protection as a house they might build with the sweat of their back. Their arguments are nonsense, however, and skip lightly over the fact that anyone may live in a house, yet only a minority of the world's population would even understand the squiggles they make on a page, let alone find any value in them. All intellectual property is fundamentally derivative, and only has value in the context of the culture in which it was born.