The Mystery of the AFIPS Orphans (2006) [pdf]

Orphaned works have long been one of my bugaboo's about the current copyright regime.

I would much prefer copyright be transitioned to a paid for license regime after some suitably long initial term (say 20 years), then those who see continuing commercial value can renew for another 10 year term - and so on up to say 100 years, with increasing fees for every term thereafter.

I think its perfect reasonable to balance the needs of large IP holders - who should be encouraged to do restoration and preservation on the IP they own and letting the commons do those things when there is no viable market for those properties.

I may have a copy of the proceedings from ca. 1982. At the time I was a copy editor, and knew somebody who ran the copy editing for AFIPS and gave me some work. I had thought that the owning societies pulled the plug on the National Computer Conference and AFIPS somewhat earlier than 1990.