If the problem is orphaned works, why not simply turn them into the public domain, an let everyone distribute them? Why keep this quango as a monopolist over all orphaned books?
This is nothing but corruption, giving those select members of the quango a cash-cow at the expense of both the authors and society.
The "collective management organisations" set up to manage this will be paying royalties to authors, something they wouldn't get if their books were made public domain.
Similarly, an author can assert their rights and ask for a republished book to be removed from sale, something which would not be possible if works were made public domains.
I'm not saying this a good idea, just that this is why they're not just removing the copyright from the works.
> The "collective management organisations" set up to manage this will be paying royalties to authors, something they wouldn't get if their books were made public domain.
To me it looks like the incentives are not really in place for that.
1) If the authors are already present, registered, in touch, etc... they're already getting paid.
2) If the authors "can't be found", the big bureaucracy gets to keep the cash.
Italy has a 'collective management organization, the SIAE, and the thing is pretty much pure evil.
This is nothing but corruption, giving those select members of the quango a cash-cow at the expense of both the authors and society.
The article by the AFUL explains it well: http://aful.org/communiques/french-senate-proposes-to-legali...