[Foundation-l] Stroop report

[Ray Saintonge]

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 at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 24/03/2008, Mark Williamson <node.ue at 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