Abandoning your work

This is an interesting article by Scott Carlson in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In it, he talks about the legal and ethical quandries associated with using "orphaned" works, those works of art for which no creator can be found.

An orphan work can be a film, a book, a private letter, a painting, or any other creative work covered by copyright, in which protection, through the complexity of the law, can extend as far back as 1923. A work can become orphaned in any number of ways: For example, an artist can die, and the heirs may not know about the artist's copyrighted work. A company that published a novel might go out of business or fall into the hands of another company that does not maintain publication records. It is particularly hard to figure out who took a photograph, unless the name of the photographer or studio is cited somewhere on the print.

I am all for copyright protections, but big companies wield copyright law as a formidable weapon over the heads of scholars, satirists, and other creative types. Disney and other such organizations are good at such boorish actions, and they shudder to see a copyright lapse into public domain.

I think public domain is a good thing. Evenutally (I think 75 years after the death of the identifiable creator is ample time), all works of art should be fair game for anyone to use, whether it be in marketing campaigns, new works of art, or any other use. In the event of orphaned works, the time limit should be 75 years after the work can be reasonably assumed to have been created. After that, it belongs to everybody.

We all share in the output of humanity. Creative artists should be compensated for their works, but not forever.