Return rights to authors for books no longer sold, and let libraries digitize them so people can read them
Steps to make it happen
- People make a list of books that can no longer be bought new, and anyone in the world can view it.
- Authors can ask their publishers to give the rights back.
- Publishers choose either to sell the book again or to return the rights.
- Libraries make digital copies of books whose authors or families cannot be found.
- Libraries lend those books over the internet, one reader at a time.
- People pay authors or their families according to how often the books are read.
- Libraries stop lending a book at any time if its author asks them to.
- Old books and books in languages few people speak become something everyone can expect to read.
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The proposal in detail
This proposal covers books that have already been published, on paper or in digital form, and that can no longer be bought new at a reasonable price anywhere, with that state lasting for a period each society decides. The system has two pillars. The first is the return of rights. Authors and translators can ask a publisher to give back the right to publish. The publisher gets a grace period, and during it chooses either to put the work on sale again or to return the rights. A book that is nominally on sale through print-on-demand, where copies are printed only when someone orders, does not count as available if the price is absurdly high or nobody can actually find it. The second pillar is public digital access. For works whose authors or heirs cannot be found, or whose rights holders raise no objection, libraries and public archives can digitize them and put them online within limits that do not seriously hurt sales of new books, such as lending one copy at a time, or allowing reading only inside the library or only for registered users. Rights holders are paid compensation from a shared fund according to how much their works are used, and they can ask at any time for access to stop. Works that the author has withdrawn by choice, and works that involve the safety or privacy of people in them, are excluded. A register showing which works are covered is shared across countries, so that rights holders can easily find their works and come forward.
BenefitsForgotten works return to readers and to authors
The biggest benefit is that works that have vanished from the market can reach readers again. Researchers and students can read materials from home that they could not get before, and local people can read the records of their own land again. Literature in languages few people speak can more easily reach speakers and learners who live far away. There are benefits for authors too. Once the rights come back, they can have the work republished by another publisher, put out an e-book themselves, or move ahead with a translation, so there are choices that give the work new life. A work that has earned nothing so far may now bring in compensation. For publishers, it is a prompt to decide whether to sell a sleeping work again or let it go, and valuable works may be rediscovered. In addition, when a register for finding works is built across countries, the problem of not knowing who holds the rights becomes smaller, and this also becomes a foundation for preserving and using culture in the future.
DrawbacksPublishers may invest less, and rights holders lose some control
Publishers can be expected to object strongly. They were the ones who paid for editing and promotion and took the risk of unsold copies to bring the work out, and they will say it is unfair to make them give up the rights after a set period. Even if a book is not on sale now, they may plan to reissue it for a film adaptation or an anniversary, and returning the rights upsets their long-term revenue outlook. As a result, investment may fall in books by new writers and specialized books, whose sales are hard to predict. Also, when libraries lend books online, it may affect sales of new books and used books, and small businesses such as used bookstores could be hit. Authors have concerns too. A system in which a work is made public unless the author objects means that the work may be used without the author knowing, and it weakens the principle that authors decide how their own work is treated. The compensation may tend to be small, and who pays for digitizing and running the system is another problem. Because laws differ from country to country, it is also not simple to decide how to handle access across borders.
Learn the background
Most books disappear from bookstores within a few years of being published. Yet copyright lasts long after an author's death, so a huge number of books are in a state where nobody is selling them and nobody is allowed to copy them. For works whose authors have died and whose heirs are unknown, or whose publishers have gone out of business and left the owner of the rights unclear, there is not even anyone to ask for permission. Digital technology has made copying and delivering a book almost free, but under the law these books remain locked away. As a result, books recording local history, literature written in languages few people speak, and works that were once read but lost their commercial value sit asleep on the shelves of used bookstores and a few libraries, or are lost. In the age of e-books, some works have also become unreadable once the service that distributed them shut down. Written words are part of humanity's memory. We need to rethink a situation in which whether a book can be read depends only on the convenience of the seller, while still respecting the author.
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It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-15d) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes