Book People Archive

Re: Re: Redeeming copyright

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Joseph Pietro Riolo wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Rod Hay <rodhay@[redacted]> wrote:
> > There is in the common law, a right to appropriate abandoned property. Could it
> > not be argued that a book that has been out of print for a certain number of> > years has been abandoned, and therefore available to all comers.
>              
> Just a quick response.  No, the law concerning abandoned property does
> not apply to any copyrighted work.  If you find a book on a sidewalk
> and could not locate the rightful owner of the book, the physical
> things of the book (papers, ink, hard boards or cloth, strings and
> glue for binding, etc.) are considered as abandoned and you can keep
> the book.  But, the invisible thing inside the book known as "work"
> such as story, essay, poems, play, etc. is never abandoned unless the
> author of the work explicitly dedicates it to the public domain.

But note Rod's use of the phrase "Could it not be argued ..." which tells
me he's proposing this as a better interpretation of copyright powers
granted to the federal government in the Constitution, rather than a
description of the current state of copyright.

To follow your analogy, let's say I find a book in the library and would
like to purchase a copy for myself, but it has been out of print for 10
years. I would like to consider it copyright abandonment, and should be
able to claim it for the public domain and reprint it myself, for "the
encouragement of the arts". A policy like this would move copyright out of
the current absolute-property model and into the "use it or lose it" model
that trademarks have.

Jon