EU Piracy Report

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
"I don't think you get the concept of orphaned books. Those are books whose ownership is so obscure that it's not possible or at least extremely expensive to find the owner and offer to pay them. There are a lof of such books and none of them are ancient books. Ancient books are out of copyright."

Like?

I can't name any orphaned books and that's exactly the problem. I just did a google search for lists and I didn't find any. I did find an estimate that in the UK there are 25 million orphaned works. That includes anything that can be copyrighted. Not just books. My guess, and it's only that, is that the number is far higher in the USA.

Another interesting fact I found in my googling was that publishers sometimes print only a small number of books and sell them as collectors editions. An example given was Madonna's book "Sex". Only a limited number was printed and they sold for high prices and since then it's become one of the most sought after books in the USA, according to the article. When they do this there's the implied promise that there will be no further printings.

I'm not sure that's an example of an orphaned book since it's something people seem to want and talk about so it's not likely to be forgotten soon. I hadn't heard of it but I'm an old guy. I also doubt that the loss of this book will end our civilization.

Barry

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by barryem

I can't name any orphaned books and that's exactly the problem. I just did a google search for lists and I didn't find any. I did find an estimate that in the UK there are 25 million orphaned works. That includes anything that can be copyrighted. Not just books. My guess, and it's only that, is that the number is far higher in the USA.

Another interesting fact I found in my googling was that publishers sometimes print only a small number of books and sell them as collectors editions. An example given was Madonna's book "Sex". Only a limited number was printed and they sold for high prices and since then it's become one of the most sought after books in the USA, according to the article. When they do this there's the implied promise that there will be no further printings.

I'm not sure that's an example of an orphaned book since it's something people seem to want and talk about so it's not likely to be forgotten soon. I hadn't heard of it but I'm an old guy. I also doubt that the loss of this book will end our civilization.

Barry

I think Madonna is a good example of marketing.

[haertig]

To satisfy my curiosity, does anyone know who benefits from the copyright for books published by the big companies? Is it the author, or the publishing company? As part of the contract to publish a book, do the larger corporations require authors to sign over copyrights to them? I believe this is the case in the music industry, for all but the biggest artists. The actual artists get pennies per sale, and it's the large companies that draw all the profits. Evidenced by the legal push against music pirates a few years back - those threats and lawsuits were brought by the RIAA, not the artists.

I'm all for authors making money off of copyrights, but I'm undecided about publishers being able to leverage them away from the authors via contract, with the author ending up with basically nothing in the end and the publishers taking all the spoils. Lord knows patents and trade marks are massively abused ("preemptive patent" - you patent an abstract idea that is useless to you, but you think your competitor might want, just so you can squeeze money out of them). Are copyrights for books in the same category? i.e., Meant to protect the authors, but being abused to create profits for corporations instead?

I'm not arguing for ignoring copyrights. But the discussion in this thread tends to assume that the copyrights are protecting the authors. Do they really? This isn't a rhetorical question - I'd don't know the answer, but would like to. Are there any authors here that are using the large publishers that can comment? What percentage of a books selling price actually goes to the author?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by haertig

To satisfy my curiosity, does anyone know who benefits from the copyright for books published by the big companies? Is it the author, or the publishing company? As part of the contract to publish a book, do the larger corporations require authors to sign over copyrights to them? I believe this is the case in the music industry, for all but the biggest artists. The actual artists get pennies per sale, and it's the large companies that draw all the profits. Evidenced by the legal push against music pirates a few years back - those threats and lawsuits were brought by the RIAA, not the artists.

I'm all for authors making money off of copyrights, but I'm undecided about publishers being able to leverage them away from the authors via contract, with the author ending up with basically nothing in the end and the publishers taking all the spoils. Lord knows patents and trade marks are massively abused ("preemptive patent" - you patent an abstract idea that is useless to you, but you think your competitor might want, just so you can squeeze money out of them). Are copyrights for books in the same category? i.e., Meant to protect the authors, but being abused to create profits for corporations instead?

I'm not arguing for ignoring copyrights. But the discussion in this thread tends to assume that the copyrights are protecting the authors. Do they really? This isn't a rhetorical question - I'd don't know the answer, but would like to. Are there any authors here that are using the large publishers that can comment? What percentage of a books selling price actually goes to the author?

Quick answer: it depends on the contract.

[darryl]

Anecdotally and according to many writing blogs, in the case of the Big Five all but their top bestselling authors receive a pittance per book sold, if anything. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Joe Konrath have experience of both traditional and self-publishing and have posted extensively on the subject. Cinisajoy is quite right to say that it depends on the contract, but traditional publishing contracts were drafted when the publisher held all the power and was effectively the only realistic way for a writer to reach a mass audience. They were terrible for authors then and, somewhat surprisingly, have actually got worse since. At one stage some of them were seeking to have writers sign addendums to old publishing contracts in what was described by some at the time as a "rights grab". Now they apparently seek an authors work for the life of the copyright and all rights including electronic rights.

Outside of the Big 5 there are some good innovative publishers who at least anecdotally are offering authors much better terms. For instance Bookouture, now acquired by I think Harper Collins, was offering its authors a 50% royalty rate.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

Anecdotally and according to many writing blogs, in the case of the Big Five all but their top bestselling authors receive a pittance per book sold, if anything. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Joe Konrath have experience of both traditional and self-publishing and have posted extensively on the subject. Cinisajoy is quite right to say that it depends on the contract, but traditional publishing contracts were drafted when the publisher held all the power and was effectively the only realistic way for a writer to reach a mass audience. They were terrible for authors then and, somewhat surprisingly, have actually got worse since. At one stage some of them were seeking to have writers sign addendums to old publishing contracts in what was described by some at the time as a "rights grab". Now they apparently seek an authors work for the life of the copyright and all rights including electronic rights.

Outside of the Big 5 there are some good innovative publishers who at least anecdotally are offering authors much better terms. For instance Bookouture, now acquired by I think Harper Collins, was offering its authors a 50% royalty rate.

That's somewhat misleading A typical author can expect to get 8% of the retail price of a paperback. It's more for a hardback or trade. Of course, you also have to take into account that there are several middle men before the money that the retailer pays gets to the publisher, and each gets a cut. According to some of what I read, a publisher might get $5.20 from a book that cost $16 which is a bit over 30%. The publisher only gets paid for copies that are actually sold.

https://www.alanjacobson.com/writers...of-publishing/

8% of $10 is 80 cents, so yes an author does get literally pennies per copy, but it's not as extreme as it sounds. A publisher who pays 50% of retail to the author isn't going to publish very many books.

Are there exceptions? Sure, there are authors who pay vanity publishers to publish the book. I'm sure there are naive authors, who don't hire a literary agent and thus don't know the norms and will sign whatever is put in front of them.

As far as reversion of rights go, most standard publishing contracts have reversion clauses which state that the rights revert back to the author is the book goes out of print for a period of time, or fails to sell a given number of copies in the previous 6 months. Most publishes will revert the rights of books that they aren't making any money on. Why wouldn't they?

One of the big reasons that authors have literary agents is so they can negotiate a contract that has the clauses that they care about. Just remember, it's a business.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Like?

I recall working on digitizing a book published in the Soviet Union. No listed Author, No Year, no traces of anything about this thing online.... so the guess is this was printed anywhere from 1922-1990. Could be Public Domain, could have someone's unexpired copyrights on it for the next hundred years.

This also halts any sort of Derivative Works from occurring, like translations. Let us say we would want to take that text and translate it into Russian... no can do!

Non-Fiction Economics Books

A lot of the books I work on: Author dead, obscure publisher (most likely foreign) gets bought out by who knows who, giant spaghetti nest of rights ensues.

There is a (small) market for these books to be digitized/reprinted, but spending on a search + tens/hundreds of hours of manpower (which is not guaranteed to EVEN FIND THE RIGHTS OWNER), would quickly drive the project to unprofitability.

And even the potential threat of litigation causes many companies to just drop it there, or never go that far in the first place.

Or let's say you DO run across a rights-owner:

Over the decades, one of the guys I do a lot of work for has tried to get HUNDREDS of these obscure out-of-print publications digitized/reprinted... he told me to NOT waste my time.

He spent years, even with a best-case-scenario of OF THE AUTHORS THEMSELVES helping, trying to get the stuff reprinted... the publishers are like mules. Many insist on fees and/or restrictions which would drive the entire project into unprofitability before it even got off the ground!

The authors signed their soul to the devil, and now their own books are locked away forever.

Originally Posted by Hitch

I tend to disagree that in this day and age, any book remotely current will expire and be lost forever, if only because a) someone will probably try to sell a bootleg copy on Amazon or b) Gutenberg and any inheritors/successors will probably try to keep it alive, as well, but...it could happen, yes.

Obscure Journals

There are also plenty of things like Journals/Articles/Pamphlets that don't get reprinted, and/or get lost down the memory hole.

In the case of one journal we digitized, it was only sold to probably a few hundreds of people back in the 70s/80s. Only a few packrats/donators had copies still stashed somewhere after 20+ years.

Now that we were able to redigitize them, we could breathe new life back into it (pull out individual articles, write about it, reference it, etc., etc.).

Imagine if the publisher of the journal went out of business though... these separate packrats/donators probably wouldn't spend the resources to try to digitize their own collections... because they might get attacked by some nebulous rights-holder!

And with journals, who knows what hornet's nest of copyright you might stir up (each individual AUTHOR might own their own little pieces).

By the time the copyright would have expired, the few remaining copies would probably be long gone. And any physical collections left would likely be missing many volumes.

Other Media

While not books, these deal with video:

The only known surviving copy of Super Bowl I:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ocked-up.shtml

The NFL even tried to attack CBS for INTERVIEWING the guy about it. And they are even prohibiting him FROM SELLING HIS OWN VHS TAPE (unless it's sold to the NFL... for their paltry sum).

Or this woman had recorded TV news from 1977-2012 onto VHS tapes. Many of those are the only copies that are known to exist any more:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/...ars-of-tv-news

Or the missing Doctor Who episodes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor...ssing_episodes

There are also examples of original copies of (digital) movies getting lost:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/...e-obsolescence

Or the famous example of Toy Story 2's source files being deleted, and luckily being backed up on one of the worker's home computers:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...e-backup.shtml

Originally Posted by Hitch

This seems bizarre to me. What publishing house would willingly NOT print more copies fo a book that's in high demand, like a best-seller?

Foreign Works + Translations

The books may be very successful in country X, but the publisher has absolutely no intention of expanding its release to non-X regions.

Different Editions

Speaking of another case where an author/publisher might refuse to reprint:

I remember one book where the author's Second Edition was completely morphed to pretty much the complete OPPOSITE conclusions he had in the First Edition. I doubt the author/publisher would now want the First Edition to see the light of day!

We would be interested in reprinting the First Edition though, because that was the correct one.

Originally Posted by barryem

Another interesting fact I found in my googling was that publishers sometimes print only a small number of books and sell them as collectors editions. An example given was Madonna's book "Sex". Only a limited number was printed and they sold for high prices and since then it's become one of the most sought after books in the USA, according to the article. When they do this there's the implied promise that there will be no further printings

Yep, similar issue occurs with old Video Games + Software:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

A lot of these games were made decades ago, and can only run on decades-old hardware (which isn't being manufactured any more).

You occasionally get a great company like GOG.com, who tries to get the rights to the old games and make them work on newer systems, but even with all their resources, they still have trouble finding a lot of these copyright-holders.

The video game market is also an absolute TON of examples of who knows what game is owned by who, which small obscure company got bought by what, giant webs of mergers/acquisitions.... all mixed with a giant scoop of completely obsolete or incompatible hardware!

Example: "The Sad Story Behind A Dead PC Game That Can't Come Back".

* * *

I recently came across another completely new category I hadn't thought of before. Arcade+Pinball machines.

For example, this channel shows off thousands of their refurbished machines, and explain a lot of the history behind each one:

https://www.youtube.com/user/tntamusements/featured

You can refurbish the old stuff, but heaven forbid you try to take the ROMs and make your own duplicates!

Originally Posted by SleepyBob

Probably the clearest examples are outside of books -- photographs. Go to pretty much any old magazine, and you can find pictures that don't note the photographer, and many of these companies won't have records internally anymore for such "trivia". But they are still copyrighted.

There are plenty of old, weird pictures floating around the internet where people can't even figure out what the photo is about, much less who took it.

Heh, that reminds me of this Techdirt article, University Requires Students To Pay $180 For 'Art History' Text That Has No Photos Due To Copyright Problems.

Here is another article to toss on the Orphan Works reading list, "Out of Fear, Colleges Lock Books and Images Away From Scholars":

Spoiler:

Missing Documentation

Photographs are another copyright quagmire. The University of California at San Diego library system, for example, houses more than 100,000 photos from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. Ships, sharks, scientists: Those images document the past 100 years of marine science. But many of them were donated to Scripps without copyright documentation. That has limited the number of photos that the Scripps archives can share online.

[...]

Other colleges just aren't digitizing to begin with, because of the legal uncertainty around orphans. Many will look at collections they want to preserve—tapes crumbling into goo, papers fading—and "put them back into the box and hope someone decides what to do with them next year," says Jessica Litman, a law professor and copyright expert at the University of Michigan.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

...

Here is another article to toss on the Orphan Works reading list, "Out of Fear, Colleges Lock Books and Images Away From Scholars":

There are a lot of old movies and TV shows that are lost forever. One of the interesting stories about film restoration was the story about the restoration of a couple of John Wayne flicks, The High and The Mighty and Island in the Sky. Apparently, because of copyright issues, there were only a couple of copies in a film vault, and because of water damage and a lost reel, the movie was almost lost and it took a lot of time and effort to piece together a restored version.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

I recall working on digitizing a book published in the Soviet Union. No listed Author, No Year, no traces of anything about this thing online.... so the guess is this was printed anywhere from 1922-1990. Could be Public Domain, could have someone's unexpired copyrights on it for the next hundred years.

This also halts any sort of Derivative Works from occurring, like translations. Let us say we would want to take that text and translate it into Russian... no can do!

Non-Fiction Economics Books

A lot of the books I work on: Author dead, obscure publisher (most likely foreign) gets bought out by who knows who, giant spaghetti nest of rights ensues.

There is a (small) market for these books to be digitized/reprinted, but spending on a search + tens/hundreds of hours of manpower (which is not guaranteed to EVEN FIND THE RIGHTS OWNER), would quickly drive the project to unprofitability.

And even the potential threat of litigation causes many companies to just drop it there, or never go that far in the first place.

Or let's say you DO run across a rights-owner:

Over the decades, one of the guys I do a lot of work for has tried to get HUNDREDS of these obscure out-of-print publications digitized/reprinted... he told me to NOT waste my time.

He spent years, even with a best-case-scenario of OF THE AUTHORS THEMSELVES helping, trying to get the stuff reprinted... the publishers are like mules. Many insist on fees and/or restrictions which would drive the entire project into unprofitability before it even got off the ground!

The authors signed their soul to the devil, and now their own books are locked away forever.



Obscure Journals

There are also plenty of things like Journals/Articles/Pamphlets that don't get reprinted, and/or get lost down the memory hole.

In the case of one journal we digitized, it was only sold to probably a few hundreds of people back in the 70s/80s. Only a few packrats/donators had copies still stashed somewhere after 20+ years.

Now that we were able to redigitize them, we could breathe new life back into it (pull out individual articles, write about it, reference it, etc., etc.).

Imagine if the publisher of the journal went out of business though... these separate packrats/donators probably wouldn't spend the resources to try to digitize their own collections... because they might get attacked by some nebulous rights-holder!

And with journals, who knows what hornet's nest of copyright you might stir up (each individual AUTHOR might own their own little pieces).

By the time the copyright would have expired, the few remaining copies would probably be long gone. And any physical collections left would likely be missing many volumes.

Other Media

While not books, these deal with video:

The only known surviving copy of Super Bowl I:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ocked-up.shtml

The NFL even tried to attack CBS for INTERVIEWING the guy about it. And they are even prohibiting him FROM SELLING HIS OWN VHS TAPE (unless it's sold to the NFL... for their paltry sum).

Or this woman had recorded TV news from 1977-2012 onto VHS tapes. Many of those are the only copies that are known to exist any more:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3022022/...ars-of-tv-news

Or the missing Doctor Who episodes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor...ssing_episodes

There are also examples of original copies of (digital) movies getting lost:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/...e-obsolescence

Or the famous example of Toy Story 2's source files being deleted, and luckily being backed up on one of the worker's home computers:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...e-backup.shtml



Foreign Works + Translations

The books may be very successful in country X, but the publisher has absolutely no intention of expanding its release to non-X regions.

Different Editions

Speaking of another case where an author/publisher might refuse to reprint:

I remember one book where the author's Second Edition was completely morphed to pretty much the complete OPPOSITE conclusions he had in the First Edition. I doubt the author/publisher would now want the First Edition to see the light of day!

We would be interested in reprinting the First Edition though, because that was the correct one.



Yep, similar issue occurs with old Video Games + Software:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

A lot of these games were made decades ago, and can only run on decades-old hardware (which isn't being manufactured any more).

You occasionally get a great company like GOG.com, who tries to get the rights to the old games and make them work on newer systems, but even with all their resources, they still have trouble finding a lot of these copyright-holders.

The video game market is also an absolute TON of examples of who knows what game is owned by who, which small obscure company got bought by what, giant webs of mergers/acquisitions.... all mixed with a giant scoop of completely obsolete or incompatible hardware!

Example: "The Sad Story Behind A Dead PC Game That Can't Come Back".

* * *

I recently came across another completely new category I hadn't thought of before. Arcade+Pinball machines.

For example, this channel shows off thousands of their refurbished machines, and explain a lot of the history behind each one:

https://www.youtube.com/user/tntamusements/featured

You can refurbish the old stuff, but heaven forbid you try to take the ROMs and make your own duplicates!



Heh, that reminds me of this Techdirt article, University Requires Students To Pay $180 For 'Art History' Text That Has No Photos Due To Copyright Problems.

Here is another article to toss on the Orphan Works reading list, "Out of Fear, Colleges Lock Books and Images Away From Scholars":

What about books that were put out by Reiman publications? They had numerous authors that had given the copyright to the publisher.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by darryl

Outside of the Big 5 there are some good innovative publishers who at least anecdotally are offering authors much better terms. For instance Bookouture, now acquired by I think Harper Collins, was offering its authors a 50% royalty rate.

You finally wrote something to make me not like Harper Collins!

Bookouture FAQ

Do you pay your authors an advance?

No, we don’t.

They are putting all the risk on the author, none on the corporation.

This is like a restaurant -- headed up by a multi-billionaire -- which pays no salary and expects the wait staff to live on tips.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

There are a lot of old movies and TV shows that are lost forever. One of the interesting stories about film restoration was the story about the restoration of a couple of John Wayne flicks, The High and The Mighty and Island in the Sky. Apparently, because of copyright issues, there were only a couple of copies in a film vault, and because of water damage and a lost reel, the movie was almost lost and it took a lot of time and effort to piece together a restored version.

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.

Barry

[issybird]

Originally Posted by barryem

I'm not sure this can be blamed on copyright. I have no idea what caused this.

Barry

They were cuts made pre-release because the film was so long. The film as released exists in its entirety; it's the version restored to the original rough cut that includes stills and other fillers and a mono soundtrack. More than anything else, it reflected the necessity to get in a certain number of showings each day.

[barryem]

Interesting. The DVD I have has the cuts. I just looked on Amazon and I didn't see any other choices for the Judy Garland 1954 version. Any idea where I can get that?

I saw that movie in the drive in theater near me just after it played in the first run theaters. It's always been a favorite. I was 14 then, well, by the time I saw it I might have been 15. I saw her in person a few years later. She was something. I think I've seen about 4 live performances of major stars in my life and that was the majorest one.

Barry

[Tex2002ans]

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.

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:

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.

[...]

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: "[...]".

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.

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.)

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

There is an article on Nina Paley, who created an animated film, Sita Sings the Blues:

Thanks for that link. I'll read it after I read through the forum today.

I earlier posted a link to a TED Talk by Nina Paley where she talks about that. Here's the link again in case you missed it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc&t=626s

Barry