|
I'm stuck on a couple of thoughts. The first one is that if we are treating copyrights as property does/should the state own them if an heir can't be found? The second is that having to renew copyrights is problematical unless there's a simple way to check registrations as well as an understanding about international requirements (having to periodically renew the registration in multiple countries would be burdensome regardless of fees).
BTW when I think of the value of the public domain my first thought is of historians and social scientists being able to reproduce sufficiently old books, notes, diaries and letters without the need to find and negotiate with heirs. In this case it's not the societal value of any individual work that matters but rather what can be determined from many.
On the level of individual works society as a whole may not suffer if a random book without a clear heir was unavailable but if all such books from the Illiad to the current day were unavailable I think we would all agree on the loss. At some point works should enter the public domain for the benefit of the public, the only question to be debated is when and how.
|