Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
A film about Jimi Hendrix that doesn't feature his music seems absurd to me, and imho proves what many on this thread are saying.
If you keep works locked up by copyright forever, you restrict creativity. The idea that people can use copyrighted works no problem if they just get permission so what's the big deal doesn't hold up when you start getting rights-holders *denying* the permission.
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Or when you can't find the rights-holders.
Hostage works, restricted from public use because nobody can be found to grant permission to use them, are a growing problem.
Life+70, or even Life+50, with no registry, means that many works--perhaps the majority of all copyrighted works (because that's not limited to formally published works), are untraceable after the creator's death. Two generations later? Nobody has any idea who owns the rights. There are no nice clear laws about copyright inheritance... are the copyrights owned by spouse? Surviving children? Split between them at some odd percentage level? What if there's no spouse, but 4 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren at the time of the creator's death? Or no direct descendents, and no siblings, but the author's cousin's grandchildren are still alive?
The idea that someone wanting to research "letters to soldiers" and needing to get permission to quote a letter from from "Billy Smith, age 8" in NYC from 1972, is ridiculous.