madcow writes “I wasn’t aware that congress had restored copyright in 1994 to several works which had lapsed previously, but boingboing.net tipped me off to this site which is collecting horror stories to fight this 1984’ish sounding event.
Note that this is different from copyright extension.”
Golan vs. Ashcroft
The site listed gives links to the actual document or complaint submitted. Two things jump out: 1. Its foreign materials that are getting their copyright restored. 2. The reason they didn’t receive copyright in the first place was because they ‘failed to satisfy the requirements of the Copyright Act’. (whatever that means)
Some of the stories told are unfortunate, the Peter & The Wolf one certainly is. But why didn’t these items satisfy requirements for copyright? And isn’t it possible that restoring the copyrights is simply an act of respecting the original creators or owners of the work? I’m all for the US acting unilaterally when necessary but that doesn’t mean we just get to steal someone’s work and pass it out to everyone because they are from a foreign country.
restoration?
ALA comments.
I think what’s remarkable is that we’re moving from extending to “restoring” copyright. Who will they be restored to? I’ve got a hunch that it won’t be the families of the creators, but the last, or more likely the most dominant, company to publish!
I’d encourage folks to begin reading up on this case as I’m starting to do now. This is a VERY slippery slope and really should unite liberals and conservatives alike (imagine the Bible being copyrighted for a minute…and just try to stop shuddering).
Re:Golan vs. Ashcroft
Some things “failed to satisfy the requirements of the Copyright Act” because registration requirements were easy for foreign publishers to miss or screw up. A relatively recent case of this, and a famous one in certain circles, is the original _The Lord of the Rings_. The British publisher allowed too many copies to be exported to the US without registering it, and an American paperback publisher, Ace Books, spotted the mistake and rushed out a paperback edition. The British publisher had Tolkien revise the book, copyrighted that, and cut a deal with Houghton Mifflin, which included a letter from Tolkien addressed to “those who believe in courtesy, at least, to living authors”, which appeared on the back cover of the Houghton Mifflin/Ballantine editions for many years.
Re:Golan vs. Ashcroft
Wow, that’s wild. So restoring rights in this case, probably to the family, would be a good thing.
Re:Golan vs. Ashcroft
Yes, and there are other cases like that.
Although Christopher Tolkien has in practice not been much damaged by it. The “copyright the minimal revision” trick might not have stood up to legal challenge, but the “letter from the author” thing actually did affect sales enough to drive the Ace edition off the market. And Christopher has since built a substantial academic and publishing career out of study, compilation, and publication of JRR’s considerable body of unpublished work.
The principle is pretty clear, though. Technical requirements tripped up a foreign publisher, and enabled what was morally an act of theft. For writers who were successful enough that this kind of ip-grab was worthwhile, but lacked the pr-savvy advice, this could do serious damage to the writer’s major reason for selling his work rather than giving it away: to provide for themselves and their children.
It’s a clearly different situation from debates over whether copyright should be perpetual, and should that mean that we need to track down the descendants of Shakespeare or James Fenimore(sp? it looks wrong no matter what I do to it) Cooper.