On 28 February 2017 at 06:11, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
17 U.S. Code ยง 203 - Termination of transfers and licenses granted by the author
I don't usually post to this list and hope this isn't too off-topic, but, coincidentally, I've looked into that matter a bit last year as a tangential issue (from a comparative law perspective). So, I don't know if you're aware and interested, but there are some articles dealing with this termination issue under U.S. copyright law in the context of open-content licenses.
Specifically, I'd refer you to Loren, Building a Reliable Semicommons of Creative Works, 14 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 271, 318-28 (2007) (arguing that section 203 is inapplicable to CC licenses under a suggested doctrine of limited copyright abandonment); Armstrong, Shrinking the Commons, 47 Harv. J. on Legis. 359, 405-09 (2010) (expressing skepticism as to whether courts would adopt Professor Loren's approach, suggesting, alternatively, an analogy to the abandonment provisions of the Patent Act to justify limits on the termination of open-content licenses); and Greenberg, More than Just a Formality, 59 UCLA L. Rev. 1028, 1060-63 (2012) (suggesting legislative action). All three articles are also freely available online (in one case at least in a pre-publication version), at https://www.law.berkeley.edu/ files/Loren.pdf, http://scholarship.law.uc.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1146&context=fac_pubs, and < http://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/59-4-4.pdf%3E, respectively.
(None of them are touching upon the derivative work issue, which is a rather Wikimedia-specific consideration. It could arguably not provide a universal solution to the potential problem, since the availability of a derivative work is the exception, rather than the norm, even in an open-content world. I have therefore not looked into this.)
Best, Patrik