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Twenty-two years ago I wrote a humor column for the college newspaper. A few years later (because of a scandal with the student government) they declared their
by spc476 15y ago
Twenty-two years ago I wrote a humor column for the college newspaper. A few years later (because of a scandal with the student government) they declared their independence and moved off-campus. A few years after that, they went bankrupt and shut down.
Who owns the copyright to the columns I wrote?
With a registration system, I could look that up. Now? I could republish the content and wait to get sued to figure out who owns it, but that's rather expensive.
- jkn 15y agoYou own the copyright. Unless of course you explicitly transferred it to the college newspaper, but then you would know. This is a good example why a registration based system is bad: as a student you would likely not have bothered registering for copyright on your humor column, while in the present system you enjoy the protections and can republish as you like. (If you had worked for a commercial newspaper, you would have created a work for hire and the newspaper would detain the copyright. I'm not sure what happens to copyright when the newspaper disappears but this is unrelated to copyright registration)