A more detailed example: I was scanning some family photos (for backup/archive/family use, no publishing as of now) and noticed that several have small stickers marked with copyright notices of the small town photography company that took them. I asked my family members and they said the company is no longer in business, but I worry that those photos will never be able to be published until after well over 100 years after it was taken. How can I track down the copyright for such photos?
The law should provide a mechanism here, but does not.
Unless they took the photographs for free, the copyright notices they put on them are fraudulent.
edit: If you are working as a employee (think W-2), it is different. Just hiring someone to take pictures (think 1099/contractor), I think is not covered under the same rules.
The long answer: not unless transfer of copyright was explicitly part of the agreement.
Slightly longer answer:
In most cases nowadays when you hire a photographer, the photographer retains the copyright and will ask a considerable amount to transfer those rights to you. What you’re essentially are paying for is for them to take the photos (cheapest option), for them to print the photos after taking them (slightly more expensive), or for them to hand you the digital photo files (expensive).
Neither of those options transfer copyright, as copyright is in principle granted to the person who takes the photos. Wedding photographers are notorious for monetizing every aspect of the job (I say this without value judgement) for example, where you pay a fee to cover the event, a fee for printing photos and a fee for receiving digital copies (because you don’t have to pay them for printing).
Problem for the next game was the music. The original author commissioned about a dozen of artists, problem is, he didn't own the rights, only a licence for having the music in the original game. So the translator had to find a way to get in touch with all of the rights-holders and negotiate a license for the translation with each one. Because he is just one man, it was simply too much work and he abandoned the project.
It is actually a rather common situation. It may result in cancelled projects, changing the music with a varying level of success or just removing it altogether.
“WKRP in Cincinnati” has so much music in the episodes that the licensing costs to stream it today would be prohibitive.
We have entered 1984 where history is mutable.
The music was such a part of the show. Now it seems impossible to get the original series as it aired at the time.
Even the pirates have failed me in this instance.
>We have entered 1984 where history is mutable.
It's terrible. I worry about the same thing for children playing online games nowadays as well.
Once the servers inevitably go offline, they will never be able to replay their childhood games.
This is our cultural heritage, our shared memory. Gone.
That's the one: https://www.senscritique.com/contact/Saffran_Prod/507351
Note that an English translation of both games exist under the name "When they Cry", available on Steam, among others. It is actually a reedition of the game and not translated by the same person.
1) It might be hard for the rights holder to assert their copyright at a later stage, if they lack the evidence to do so at the outset 2) any damages awarded might be mitigated by the attempts to search for the rights holder, especially if the ‘true’ owner was contacted at some stage. Seems more likely they’d be compensatory as opposed to punitive
I know this isn’t the prevailing legal practice, but as a lawyer, the lack of a willingness to be bold in these legal situations has always surprised me
Perhaps the tail risk of being slapped down is just too large
I’ve always wondered about a business model of searching for such works, undertaking a bona-fide effort to find the owner, and then just selling it as your own if one can’t be identified. (Perhaps with a war chest kept in reserve for the rare instances licensing fees are demanded later). ‘Copyright squatting’ if you will
In a sane, rational world that would probably be the case. Too bad we don't live on one!
You're an attorney and don't know that copyright infringement is a strict liability offense?