Copyrights

One important thing that I learned in today’s lecture on copyrights, was that once you are dead your copyrights die with you. I found it interesting also that Bono was instrumental in changing laws that surrounded copyrights. Bono was able to make copyrights active for 20 years longer than that had previously lasted. These copyrights (after their author is dead) are transferred to the Public Domain. I think that it is interesting that after someone has died their work is able to be used by many people through the Public Domain. This is significant because the relatives of the dead author may seem to be the most likely candidate for the copyright material. I believe that it is good that people’s work can still be useful to the author’s family by still needing people to ask permission before using their work. This differs from “Orphan Works” because “Orphan Works” are publications for which no author, publisher, or other copyrighted holder can be located.