[Coco] The dire condition of software documentation..

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

On 2019-08-12 07:55, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> Copyright issues are never vague.  The holder being out of business
> has no effect on the Copyright, legally.  The item is still 
> Copyrighted.

Correct. The copyright office has never made a determination of when or 
if orphaned works lose their protection, and until it does, copyright 
exists in all those works.

I wanted to quote a poem in a book I wrote about 10 years ago. It took 
me months to trace the last person to hold the copyright (transferred 
from author to newspaper to book publisher to bookstore to retired 
owner). I found the owner in his mid-90s, with no heirs. He gave 
permission. Good thing, as there was no right to reprint it if it was 
orphaned by his death.

Dennis