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Originally Posted by Ginger Irving
Who exactly gets to own the work of millions of long-dead authors?
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If the author is dead, then it goes to their estate.
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Originally Posted by Ginger Irving
The ownership lawsuits alone, for millions and millions of works, will be an epic, chaotic nightmare to behold.
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Not really. At least some of these people are already collecting their royalties or similar payments. The works put back under copyright have international protection -- it's just that due to some quirks in previous US copyright laws, the US did not offer them protection.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ginger Irving
What if the author has no heirs, or nobody wants to claim ownership of their work?
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Then it's an orphaned work. There's a lot of that around, and no consensus yet on how to handle them. On one hand, it's a public good to make those works available again; on the other, you don't want to create a massive loophole that lets people infringe on active copyrights.