From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 20:22:58 -0500

The rational policy is the one that has already been proposed in
Congressional legislation, viz., to limit the liability of anyone
using an "orphan work" who conducts a "reasonable search" for its
owner according to certain criteria.  This legislation did not,
however, anticipate the type of mass digitization that Google
undertook with its library program, and for that kind of enterprise we
probably need to use some form of "extended collective licensing":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_collective_licensing.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 08:03:47 -0400
>
> See the article in the Atlantic Monthly on the impact of the copyright
> act and the big digitization projects.  The graph that comes up as
> soon as you click tells the story and then the article unpacks the
> details.  Well worth a viewing.
>
> Roughly what seems to be happening is that the copyright blanket is
> being thrown over works post-1923, by those who own copyrights that
> are thereby extended *and* by those who are active in extracting
> value from them.  But it also suppresses the value of post-1923
> materials that don't have rights-owners on the case.  If you don't
> have an estate promoting and protecting your work and agitating with
> publishers to keep it in print, your work may just vanish from scope.
> "Orphan works" so-called are the ones chiefly at risk, but as scholar
> I'm thinking of the challenge this will make simply for *knowing* the
> 20th century.
>
> Poses to me the question of what -- GIVEN the rigidity of the law --
> could best be done.  What would a rational policy or practice look
> like?  Offshore redistribution in the Turks and Caicos?  Start a
> business offering copyright insurance to publishers who take a chance
> on things?  The right test case pushed towards the "government, or we
> don't need no stinking government" Supreme Court?
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/#.T3dP4kT9WRc.twitter
>
> Jim O'D