Re: copyright renewal

On Wed, 19 Jul 2000, Mary Jensen <cnicopy[_at_]olemiss.edu> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Nick Smith <nsmith[_at_]nla.gov.au> wrote:
> >
> > Hi, a while ago on CNI-copyright, I think someone mentioned a very
> > interesting statistic that (some time ago obviously), when the
> > initial 28 year copyright term was up, only a small percentage
> > bothered to renew for the second 28 year period (and of course,
> > copyright owners had to be sufficiently interested in copyright
> > protection to register it in the first place; no shopping lists
> > here...)
> >
> > Can anyone recall this and do they have a citation for it?
>
> I think you are referring to a statement made by the Copyright
> Office at the Library of Congress which if I remember it correctly
> said something like 85% of copyrights were not renewed.
>
> I think it is in the report the Copyright Office made in the first
> required report after 1976 on how well the section 108 interlibrary
> loan guidelines were working out.
>
> However, my memory could be faulty. If this doesn't turn out to be
> right, email me again and I will check some of the stuff I haven't
> unpacked yet. I know I've referred to it in several articles I wrote.

Nick: I know when we were opposing the 20 year copyright extension we did a study on 1950 to 1960 motion picture copyright renewals. Approximately 50% of motion pictures registed in the USA during this period were not renewed.

We were told the percentage of renewal in still picures was much lower by someone in the LOC... More than 95% of still pictures were not renewed. It is obvious the legislation extended copyrights for a lot of "Orphan Works."

Larry Urbanski
American Film Heritage association
<larryu[_at_]interaccess.com>

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