Nathan wrote:
You mean, hold a copyright via pseudonym or other agency and enforce it in the same manner until otherwise impossible, or completely anonymously? The first, of course, we do on Wikipedia every day. The issue with this seems to be no assertion of copyright or traceability to discover if its owed, rather than an anonymously asserted claim.
Nathan
On 3/24/08, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/03/2008, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Would the copyright holders of said images ever be able to reasonably make a claim to copyright? How could they prove that? They can't, probably, assuming they are still alive.
That's something I've always wondered - is it possible to hold copyright anonymously? It would seem to be completely unenforceable.
This is one of those areas where the fundamental differences between civil law and common law countries comes into play. Where civil law countries view copyright as a personal civil right, common law countries view it as an object based economic right. In common law counties there is also a tendency to avoid having copyrights default to the state when there is no other heir.
I remember reading where Swedish courts had ruled that "Mein Kampf" was still protected despite the fact that it did not recognize the claim by the Bavarian state government, and could not determine who was the rightful owner.
To comply with he Berne Convention the United States had to abandon its system of compulsory registration, with the result that registration became "permissive". Registration was not completely discarded. Registration is not required for copyright protection, but lack of registration can severely restrict an owner's rights in an infringement action. Sections 408-412 of the US Copyright Act warrant serious reading. See [[ws:United States Code/Title 17/Chapter 4]]. Anonymous works can be copyright, but registration still requires that the person seeking registration has some connection with the work. The requirements are somewhat more stringent when a person has waited more than five years to seek registration.
Notwithstanding the lack of specificity, it seems that US law has more latitude for dealing with orphan works than one would expect. Perhaps the biggest stumbling block remains in the requirement that a copyright owner intending to start an action must seek registration no more than 30 days after learning of the infringement. How do we determine when a copyright owner has learned of the infringement? Especially someone who may have first noticed the infringement several years ago but did not realize until recently that he was the copyright owner.
Ec