Copy Cat

Today we learned about "Orphan Works", copyrighted material with one catch -- the author or owner cannot be located. It seems paradoxical that a person who went to the trouble to get their work copyrighted would not establish some sort of contact to maintain the rights on their work. Over a period of time, however, people die and businesses fail. It sounds terrible, but it happens, leaving copyrighted material that is in many respects useless because there is no owner to dictate the terms of use. To remedy this situation, some think that "orphan works" should pass into the public domain. In this way, such material would at least be able to benefit society in some way. Although this is an attractive solution, is it reasonable to assume that the author would be OK with this? A copyright is still property of the owner, and many think that giving the public access to it is a trespass on the rights of ownership.

This predicament reminds me of something that I learned in Business Law class about the abandonment of property. An owner of property, either realty or personalty, has the right to abandon their right to ownership. There are a multitude of reasons why a person would want to get rid of something, but without getting off subject, property that has been abandoned is legally up for grabs. I think that in some cases, it may be reasonable to assume or to prove that a copyright has been abandoned. In those cases, in my opinion, the material should pass into the public domain.