I don't really know if I have a problem with copyright being granted implicitly so long as there's an expiration. I do know that the current trend towards infinite copyright is a real problem. An excellent story about this is Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson. (He's one of my favorite authors.) Part of the problem is basing copyright's expiration on death. People live longer today, and companies count as legal entities with the potential to never die.

Part of what this lawsuit is asking for, however, is that since some works are abandoned by their copyright owners, that work is "lost" to the world until the copyright expires. The owner has decided never to do anything with the work, but no one else can reproduce it or distribute it or derive other works from it without the owner's express permission. I can see a problem there. Maybe not much of a problem if copyright expired after a short time.

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