3 ms·

These aren't works from the 19th century. Some of the performers are still alive, and those who are not their estates are entitled to control over their output.

• holman 16y ago
  The article wasn't quite about rape. It was an opinion about existing copyright laws providing a barrier to broader society enjoying these culturally significant finds. No one is trying to get around existing copyright laws here; they're trying to comply with them as much as possible. The broader aim of the piece, however, is a reevaluation of why we even have this problem in the first place. The Mickey Mouse Effect has stretched copyright into a position far different than what original copyright law set out to do: enable fair profit for a reasonable time, and then once that reasonable time has expired, open it up for the greater public good. Today we have effective perpetual copyright. The system is broken.
• rwmj 16y ago
  "rape of the hard work" ...? They're literally not being heard at all right now, except by a very lucky few audio engineers at the museum. A fixed license fee for orphan works like these would _always_ be a net positive, since they're starting from $0.
  • bugsy 16y ago
    The entire premise of orphan works is a scam. The issue is not even of releasing the recordings for all to enjoy. It's of a company or organization wanting to sell works still in copyright without obtaining permission from the legitimate owners, compensating them, or even having to bother trying to find them. Works owned by large corporations are never orphaned. It's only the small independent artists and their heirs that get shafted by this scam.
    • thristian 16y ago
      That's only because large corporations have so much existential inertia - it takes a long while to build a corporation up, and they tend to sink slowly enough that they leave evidence of where their IP goes. That said, it's not too hard for corporate IP to become orphaned. A company makes a bad investment, gets bought out by another company that gets bought out by a third, and records get lost.
    • GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
      The article clearly states that a reasonable effort must be made to locate the owner of the work AND if the owner eventually comes forward that they would be able to claim a reasonable compensation. They wouldn't, however, be able to seek huge damages. Seems like common sense to me.
      • bugsy 16y ago
        Reasonable efforts is not defined. Spending 5 minutes on the internet googling their name is a reasonable effort. So is spending 1 minute. So is spending 0 minutes and saying you tried your best. But if I decide to reprint Disney works I get my ass sued off. You guys support shafting small independent artists but have no problem with protections intact for large corporations with armies of lawyers. "Claiming compensation" is another scam. It is set up as an "artists rights organization" taking royalties from the publisher. They then spend the money. If the artist later shows up, engages a lawyer to prove they are his works, and signs a contract with the rights organization giving up control over his work, then he gets to receive a percent out of what they have collected, which was a minuscule portion of the publisher's profit to begin with. Why the fuck should the artist have to give up their rights to claim royalties for works they never authorized the publisher to sell? It's completely outrageous and those supporting this corporate fuckover of little guys are immoral assholes who should be shot in the head.
        • VBprogrammer 16y ago
          If you wish to use language like that in a way which does not enhance or support any point you are trying to make then please make your way to the comments section of digg or reddit. The rest of the grown-ups here don't need to hear it.
• gfurtjnfg 16y ago
  Sounds like someone needs to have a poke around techdirt.com for an afternoon.