Secretly Public Domain: Most books published in the US before 1964
I wish we would bring back manual renewals for copyright.  I get that publishers thought it was a hassle to have to do the work for stuff they had not published in decades and had no intention of ever reprinting, but that&#x27;s kind of the point isn&#x27;t it?  Why is the government locking away works that the original rightsholders no longer care about?  The copyright system is supposed to serve the common good, what common good is there from locking away works simply because the original owner lost interest in them?  Or worse, when nobody knows who or where the original owner is.