Re: Re: Abolishing perpetual copyright in unpublished works

• Original Message ----- From: Samuel Murray <leuce[_at_]absamail.co.za> Date: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 11:45 am Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: Abolishing perpetual copyright in unpublished works

> So here's a question, then... to whom does the copyright belong if
> the
> copyright is perpetual? Say an unpublished journal is discovered
> from a
> guy who died 400 years ago... whose permission is required to
> publish
> it? Or can it not be published at all?

AHA! Exactly.

Those questions are why the perpetual rule was abolished in Canada and the US, and is in the long, slow, painful process of being abolished in the UK. And the similar language in those other countries' acts was interpreted as I would interpret the ZA one.

Unfortunately, as drafted, the ZA act, like other Anglo-Commonwealth ones before it, presumes copyrights even in the absence of an identifiable owner (or any owner at all.)

Some Latin American countries, IIRC, have a rule that puts works for which there is no copyright owner directly into the public domain. Received on Tue Aug 29 2006 - 23:25:01 GMT