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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Not really. At least some of these people are already collecting their royalties or similar payments.
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We'll agree to disagree here. It seems obvious to me that there will be a terrible mess created by the SCOTUS. Not Citizens United-level SUPERPAC screwed up, but still a major mess. Amplified by the fact that some newly-minted IP owners will have no idea that they are! How will all the millions of potential heirs be notified of their new status? Oh, right. They won't. This creates fertile hunting grounds for the unscrupulous to take advantage of. It's a hard-wired mess in the making. Downplaying it doesn't solve it, and there is no carpet big enough to sweep it under and then walk away whistling.
Am I an heir? Are you? What mechanism is in place to let me know? Do I have to spend hundreds on a lawyer, just to find out I'm
not? Now multiply my situation by millions and tell me that's not a mess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
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.
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Of course, those non-US rights holders could have put their works in the public domain as well, solving the problem from a different, and social-responsible, way. But, no.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
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.
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I'm not sure adding a ton of new orphans is particularly helpful in solving this conundrum...
It's a bad decision based on a bad international agreement. This situation should have been foreseen and handled at the onset.