[ih] copyright arcana, Internet Histories Volume 9, issue 3 is BS

[John Levine]

It appears that Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <nigel at channelisles.net> said:
>There are procedures for anthologisers of (e.g.) science fiction and 
>crime/noir such as short stories that appeared in Black Mask whereby 
>every effort is made to find the copyright holder/literary executor and 
>then a disclaimer regarding permissions/payment.

That turns out to be financially quite risky.  A famous failing of US copyright law
is that there is no safe harbor for orphan works.  No matter how diligent your search
was, if you use something and a copyright owner later pops up, they can sue you and
win.  Everyone knows that's absurd but the law has not yet been fixed.

You could make a good argument that a historical work using list messages was
fair use, but fair use is only a defense if you are sued, and copyright cases
are extremely expensive even if you win.

The proposed Google Books settlement had a very half-assed workaround that gave all
of the unclaimed money to the Authors' Guild under the self serving (and false)
theory that they represent all authors.  The judge rightly rejected it.

R's,
John

PS: before Joe says it, this is rather far afield of Internet history.