Anonymous: The copyright law contains termination rights to help prevent what you describe. But the rules for termination, according to professor Patry, are even more complicated than the rules for renewal were under the old law. And the recent copyright extension law, as I understand, explicitly denies a second use of the termination mechanism to during the additional 20 years to those who have used it once to get a bite of the revenue derived from the previous 19-year extension.

In addition, Professor Patry writes that "music publishers, in testifying at the 1995 term extension hearings before the house and Senate, argued for the elimination of the [termination] provisions entirely." ("The Failure of the American Copyright System: Protecting the Idle Rich", Notre Dame Law Review, Volume 72, Number 4(May, 1997), pages 907-933, at page 922, footnote 75.)

That doesn't sound like a law designed to benefit authors.

T.