False. Abandonment certainly does still exist. There is a large body of widely-accepted case law on the matter. There have even been recent legislative initiatives, both foreign and domestic, attempting to extend abandonment to all "orphaned" works none of which have met with much success to my knowledge.
You should seek relevant legal advice if you have further questions on this pretty accepted point of law. If you wanted to say pursue a suit for damages against an infringer for taking a work seemingly in the public domain that as proper holder you have explicitly abandoned under the theory that "abandonment doesn't exist." I think any experienced attorney would inform you that you face an uphill battle to say the least but it is always about the specifics.
You raised the topic of Berne not me. I provided a quotation to show that the point of material fixation remains the same whether under USC or its treaty obligations. TRIPs leaves it to members to decide what material fixation means. In the US that means a work must be tangibly expressible, in a fixed medium, i.e. copyable.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf might be less technical and provide you the info you need regarding what generally "suitable" for copyright in the US means:
>>
Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal copyright protection. These include among others:
works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression (for example, choreographic works that have not been notated or recorded, or improvisational speeches or performances that have not been written or recorded)
>>>
In case you don't understand, and please don't be insulted as I hate to be pointing out the obvious, but you seem not to grasp that undeveloped film != negatives. You use the terms interchangeably when that is the very point under consideration, e.g. undeveloped film : negative :: improvisational speech : recorded performance
Others in the thread have argued that exposing film to light : recorded performance meriting copyright, but I think that is tenuous because undeveloped film can not be viewed, disseminated.
Negatives are normally created under the direction of the photographer or her employer in order to disseminate images and are definitely works of authorship subject to copyright. Undeveloped film is arguably not and simply property, and the article is about the purchase at auction or yard sale of undeveloped film. The photographer, being long deceased, is definitely not the one creating the negatives. The purchaser of the film is. I hope that is clear.
Sculptures/architecture are most certainly subject to duplication especially when on public display. Sorry, you seem to be going off the rails here and with "baked-beans on a wall", and I have no interest in following; my interest in the topic has waned.
Copyright abandonment has to be explicit, you can't just say a copyright on something was abandoned by the creator because they did not do something. They have to explicitly do something (such as, but not limited to placing the creation in the public domain).
> Sorry, you seem to be going off the rails here and with "baked-beans on a wall", and I have no interest in following; my interest in the topic has waned.
Would it be possible for you to - whether you're wrong or right doesn't enter into it - at least be civil?
There was absolutely nothing uncivil in any comment on this thread. The rhetoric was fact-based and direct appropriate to the topic.
For the record, there is nothing civil about your pretense of offering false opinion as fact in nearly every frontage discussion topic bordering on "law" on HN.
You are just wrong more often than you are right. Sorry if pointing that out is uncivil but it a disservice to the community. Even if you use a downvote brigade to cover your mistakes, you should be responsible for dispensing "opinionated" advice about legal issues.
You should seek relevant legal advice if you have further questions on this pretty accepted point of law. If you wanted to say pursue a suit for damages against an infringer for taking a work seemingly in the public domain that as proper holder you have explicitly abandoned under the theory that "abandonment doesn't exist." I think any experienced attorney would inform you that you face an uphill battle to say the least but it is always about the specifics.
You raised the topic of Berne not me. I provided a quotation to show that the point of material fixation remains the same whether under USC or its treaty obligations. TRIPs leaves it to members to decide what material fixation means. In the US that means a work must be tangibly expressible, in a fixed medium, i.e. copyable.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf might be less technical and provide you the info you need regarding what generally "suitable" for copyright in the US means:
>> Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal copyright protection. These include among others:
works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression (for example, choreographic works that have not been notated or recorded, or improvisational speeches or performances that have not been written or recorded) >>>
In case you don't understand, and please don't be insulted as I hate to be pointing out the obvious, but you seem not to grasp that undeveloped film != negatives. You use the terms interchangeably when that is the very point under consideration, e.g. undeveloped film : negative :: improvisational speech : recorded performance
Others in the thread have argued that exposing film to light : recorded performance meriting copyright, but I think that is tenuous because undeveloped film can not be viewed, disseminated.
Negatives are normally created under the direction of the photographer or her employer in order to disseminate images and are definitely works of authorship subject to copyright. Undeveloped film is arguably not and simply property, and the article is about the purchase at auction or yard sale of undeveloped film. The photographer, being long deceased, is definitely not the one creating the negatives. The purchaser of the film is. I hope that is clear.
Sculptures/architecture are most certainly subject to duplication especially when on public display. Sorry, you seem to be going off the rails here and with "baked-beans on a wall", and I have no interest in following; my interest in the topic has waned.