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Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
What about books that were put out by Reiman publications? They had numerous authors that had given the copyright to the publisher.
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I am not too sure on that specific publication, but that is the case in most books (at least in the pre-self-publication boom). The authors DO NOT hold the copyrights, but the publishers do.
In other cases, EVEN IF you can hunt down the new rightsholder of a dead publisher, a single book can have the the rights split between different people:
- Person A has copyrights on the Introduction
- Person B copyrights the Preface
- Person C owns the text
- Person D owns the poem on Page 53
- Person E-S owns the maps/images/charts/graphs.
Maybe the new publisher lost those detailed records.
Here is a PDF detailing a lot of the issues of Out-of-Print + Orphan Works,
"Response to Notice of Inquiry about Orphan Works" by Denise Troll Covey at Carnegie Mellon:
Spoiler:
Quote:
Nature of the problems faced by subsequent creators and users
Potential creators or other users of copyrighted works face the following problems in obtaining rights or clearances in pre-existing works:
1) Determining the copyright status of a work - It is common knowledge that works published in the United States prior to 1923 are in the public domain. It is likewise common knowledge that—unless the copyright owner placed the work in the public domain—works published 1923-1963 are copyright protected only if the copyright owner renewed the copyright, and works published after 1963 are copyright protected. The ideal method for determining the copyright status of works published 1923-1963 is to have the Copyright Office conduct a title search. In 2004, the Copyright Office charged Carnegie Mellon University Libraries $150 to conduct title searches of seven books. Many potential creators or other users might not be able to afford this. Alternatives, such as hiring a copyright attorney, could likewise be unaffordable. The result is that potential users either (a) do their best to determine copyright status and take a risk that their determination is accurate, (b) play it safe when in doubt and pursue copyright permission—which leads to additional problems described below, or (c) simply abandon the prospect of using the work, having been discouraged or disenfranchised by the current copyright system.
The figure illustrates the scope of the problem with books. The number of books published in English in the United States and the total number of books published in English were derived from the WorldCat database.1 The number of U.S. copyrights renewed is based on a study conducted by the U.S. Copyright Office in 1960.1 2 Granted the numbers are estimates, but the disparity between the number of books published in the United States during this period and the number of books that had their copyright renewed is striking. According to the study conducted by the Copyright Office, only seven percent of book copyrights were renewed. Potential users do not know which books published 1923-1963 are still copyright protected and therefore must bear the burden of determining copyright status.
2) Identifying and locating copyright owners - This task almost requires a detective. The publisher name that appears on the title page or front matter of a book is often only the starting point for a long and tedious journey that frequently dead ends. Publishers merge, go out of business, or sell their rights. Often copyright reverts to the author or the author’s estate when a book goes out of print. According to people we spoke with at the Copyright Office, the claimant on a copyright renewal record is the copyright owner at the time of renewal, but not necessarily the copyright owner today. In our experience, often the initial publisher or claimant cannot be found, so there is no starting point for finding the current copyright owner.
To locate publishers, we search the Web, the publisher search feature of the Global Books in Print database (BooksInPrint.com), the yellow pages, and relevant reference works. Many publishers have reported that copyright reverted to the author, but seldom do they have contact information for the author. For older works, often copyright has passed from the author to the author’s estate. Authors and estates are very difficult to locate. We consult the Authors Registry,3 the Writers, Artists, and Their Copyright Holders (WATCH) File,4 and the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society. Often these resources cannot help us.
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries conducted a study in 1999-2001 to determine the feasibility of acquiring copyright permission to digitize and provide Web access to books in our collection. The study was based on a statistically valid random sample of our books and a search of the copyright renewal records to determine their copyright status. The figure shows the distribution of copyrighted books in the sample by publication date and print status for which we could not find the copyright owner. Overall, publishers of almost a fourth (22%) of the books could not be found. In general, the older the book, the more difficult it was to find the publisher. In addition, the older the book, the more likely it was that the book was out of print—neither generating revenue for the copyright owner nor easily accessible to potential readers.5
Sometimes copyright to a book is owned by many people, for example, the introduction, translation, photographs and figures could each be owned by a different person. If a potential creator or user wants to use the entire book, copyright ownership of each part or item must be traced through time. In our feasibility study, 11 percent of the books in the initial sample were eliminated from the study as too complicated to pursue because of third-party copyright ownership.
3) Copyright owners often do not respond - In the feasibility study referenced above, over a third (36%) of the publishers we successfully located did not respond to multiple letters of inquiry.
Most (79%) of the books about which they did not respond were out of print. The figure shows the distribution of books for which we got no response from the copyright holder based on the total number of books in the final sample (same scale as the figure above). The percentages would be higher if the figure was based instead on the number of books for which we successfully located the publisher.
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The rest of the PDF is a fantastic read, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.
Multi-Author Books
The problem of multi-author books is a serious issue as well.
One of the book series's I read,
Wild Cards, had 23 books in total since 1987+, under 4 different publishers.
Each book is a collection of chapters, with each chapter written by a different author, 31 different authors over the years.
The last I recall, a few of the inbetween Books (something like Book #16-17) did not exist in (legal) digital copies. And there were only a few hundred physical books printed (extremely hard to find for sale, and even when they were, very expensive).
A few of the early books (like #1-5) even had trouble being digitized, because in the 20+ years since original publication, the original authors of a given chapter
did not want to give their permission for reprints.
Unlike a troublesome Preface/Introduction to an out-of-print Non-Fiction book, you can't just rip out a chapter from a Fiction book. Similarly, you can't just read Books #1-15, rip out a book in the middle, and continue reading Books #18+.
If I remember correctly, the author who wrote the Preface in Book #1 (THIS IS
THE pivotal scene which sets up the worldbuilding for the entire series), refused to give permission for the longest time! And that was THE ONLY CHAPTER he wrote in the entire series!
Now imagine how hairy it gets if these authors died, you revisited this project 20 years from now, and who knows who would own a given chapter. Instead, just to play it safe, you may have to sit around and wait for the 31st author to die + 100 years.
Side Note: Cinisajoy, did you know that you can tweak your post so that the ENTIRE GINORMOUS POST isn't requoted? It makes my finger hurt when I have to scroll so far just to see a single baby-sized response at the bottom.
You know, you can tweak what goes between the "
[QUOTE]stuff here[/QUOTE]".
Ellipses are your friend. I personally prefer the European-style: "[...]".
Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
A good example of that is the Judy Garland movie "A Star is Born" from, I think, 1954. No good complete copies have ever been found. I bought the reconstruction they managed to make from a variety of partial copies and there are 2 or 3 fairly long sections with only voice. They've filled in with still pictures of the making of the movie while you listen. This is a film that was nominated for quite a few academy awards and golden globe awards. It even won the best actor and actress golden globe awards.
It's ranked by the American Film Institute as #43 in their best picture list and as #7 in their best musical list. And yet it's been partly lost.
It's still a good movie to watch but it's kind of heartbreaking that it's not all there.
I'm not sure this can be blamed on copyright. I have no idea what caused this.
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There is an article on Nina Paley, who created an animated film, Sita Sings the Blues:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...23375986.shtml
Using a lot of uncopyrighted songs from the 1920s (hint, she still had to pay $50,000+ in securing licenses).
A lot of the culture also gets distorted, because people don't even wade into those waters in the first place.
Here is
another article interview with her. And the entire
video interview on the Internet Archive, where she discusses a lot more of the details, and the distortions/censorship copyright can cause.
Music in TV Shows
While not strictly Orphan Works, I also ran across a related issue of music from older TV Shows being edited, because the rightsholders are so hard to trace, and/or the contracts at the time never specified digital copies (because such a thing didn't exist).
Again, creating a giant spaghetti nest of multi-rightsholder issues when trying to release in future formats:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scrubs/comm...g_differences/
https://www.wired.com/2003/10/tv-on-...he-difference/
http://mentalfloss.com/article/55516...ng-theme-songs
For example, Happy Days (1974-1984), is one of the more famous examples.
These music changes can COMPLETELY CHANGE the mood of given scenes... and the replaced music is most likely
not what the original creators intended.
This issue is cropping up more and more with Netflix trying to get streaming permissions to a lot of these TV Shows. Then this has to be multiplied on a country-by-country basis.
Music in Video Games
A similar problem happens in Video Games. GTA is one of the more famous examples, where 10 songs were removed because the licensing expired:
https://www.cinemablend.com/games/GT...ved-50206.html
If I busted out the original CD version I bought in 2002, I would have a completely different experience from someone who bought a digital version in 2017.
Or in the case of Alan Wake (2010), the game was actually removed from sale:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/12/1...ses-steam-sale
(Luckily, since then, the game is back up, but this time with different music + cinematics... again, changing the mood from the original intent.)