Topics of interest: Use of subject matter with missing owners - Australian copyright policy options

摘要

This is a paper which puts forward copyright reform options to address the problem of missing or not locatable copyright owners. This is often referred to as the "orphan works" problem. One reform addresses natural person users of unpublished subject matter whose purposes are non-commercial; the other addresses all users of published subject matter. This paper also makes the suggestions that copyright reform targeted at the facilitation of mass digitisation and reuse projects should be separately resolved as a question of public policy, and that perpetual copyright terms for unpublished subject matter should be abolished.