Who Owns the Copyright?

The New York Times is reporting that the government is seeking to sell the Unabomber’s writings depicting the time period that he was sending packages through the mail system which contained bomb’s killing 3 people and hurting 28 others.  Four of the victims have sought restitution which was granted.  In order for Kaczynski to pay the $15 million restitution judgment the government has seized Kaczynski’s personal effects found in his home at the time of his arrests.  Amongst those items were the writings at issue.  The question being proposed is who owns the copyrights, however, I believe it is Kaczynski that owns the copyrights and the question should be can the government seize those rights in order to auction the writings off and pass the rights along to the new owner?  Kaczynski is arguing that by the government seizing and auctioning off his writings in order to pay restitution to the victims would be violating his First Amendment Right to Freedom of Speech.  There are so many issues that can be raised in this situation however; I am only going to deal with the First Amendment issue and copyright issue.  Kaczynski is wrong when he argues that his First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech is being violated, the government is neither preventing him from releasing his writings nor are they preventing him from creating future writings, They are simply auctioning off an existing writing in which they seized at the time of his arrest for the purposes of raising money to pay restitution to his victims.  What he should be arguing is the interference with his first right of publication.  By auctioning off the writings it prevents Kaczynski from being able to publish his works.  One can argue the mere fact he wants to give them to a college library for their collections would be considered publishing.  He will not make any money of these writings which would unfortunately hinder recovery of the restitution from the victims but it would also prevent him from becoming rich off his crimes.  However, it should be considered that if it is auctioned off are those rights auctioned off too or should it be simply treated like a piece of artwork in which you may own the original but yet they copyrights have not been transferred to the new owner.  The court clearly has a tough decision to make here carefully weighing the pros and cons and the potential effects from their decision but that is what they get paid for.  Although if I had to take a shot in the dark as to the decision of the court I would take a guess that they would side for the government grant the ability to auction off the writings give the proceeds to the victims and the copyrights would still remain with Kaczynski which would allow him to control what the new owner does with them.  The Times article may be found at the following link:  www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/us/22unabomber.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2.