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[ARSCLIST] ARSCNY
Dave,
How was the meeting? Sorry I missed it!! Believe it or not, only
yesterday did I realize I missed it --it completely escaped my mind.
Quite a bummer, since it looked very interesting indeed.
I am in the final weeks of my project here at Columbia and I guess I am
a bit distracted (actually, on that Thursday I was in the office till 1
AM... ugh)
Again, sorry I missed it --this was the last one until the fall, right?
Marcos
Dave Nolan wrote:
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1538
For Immediate Release: April 24, 2008
Contacts:
Art Brodsky (PK): 202-518-0020 (o) 301-908-7715 (c)
abrodsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tania Panczyk-Collins (APTS): 202-654-4222 (o) 773-220-9513 (c)
tpanczyk@xxxxxxxx
Public Knowledge, the Internet Archive, Association of Public Television
Stations and the Association of Research Libraries joined today to praise
the work of Senate and House legislators for introducing legislation that
would allow for greater use of “orphan works.” Those are books, music,
photos or other works for which the copyright holder can’t be found by
someone who wants to use the work in a way that normally would require
permission.
Works can become “orphaned” for a number of reasons: the owner did not
register the work, the owner sold rights in the work and did not register
the transfer, the owner died and his heirs cannot be found. The U.S.
Copyright Office found in January, 2006 that that the “orphan works problem
is real and warrants attention.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and former panel
Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced the Senate’s version, S. 2913. House
Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA),
introduced his chamber’s bill with Judiciary Committee Chairman John
Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), senior Committee Republican Lamar Smith (R-TX) and
ranking Subcommittee member Howard Coble (R-NC).
While there are differences between the bills, the two pieces of
legislation generally follow the Copyright Office recommendation that if a
user conducts a reasonably diligent search, they are generally free from
high copyright infringement damages; if an owner surfaces, they are
compensated for the use of their work. The bills also promote creation of
industry guidelines for conducting searches to find owners and encourage
use of technology through online databases and visual recognition methods.
Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, said that
bills “begin to bring balance back to copyright law—finding owners to
exploit works, encouraging use, promoting new creative uses of works. With
these bills, much of our culture that would otherwise have been lost could
be found and presented to new generations. We look forward to working with
the committees to make certain the final legislation will allow users to
have full access to the millions of works that have gone unused for
decades.”
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based
organization dedicated to preserving a record of the Internet and to bring
library materials to the Internet, also praised the legislation. “We
appreciate that the bill sponsors provided a safe harbor for libraries and
archives from penalties which have hindered our institutions from bringing
digital access to millions of works, most of which are long out of print or
never commercially sold.”
“This legislation is an important step forward in addressing the critical
issue of how Public Television stations can use orphan works in the Digital
Era,” Association of Public Television Stations Acting President and CEO
Mark Erstling said. “By making it easier for stations to use this content,
often with deep historical meaning, Congress will enable us to create new
high-quality, educational and cultural programming and services. Solving
this problem will also assist us as we embark on the creation of the
American Archive, an exciting new initiative to digitize and preserve the
vast archives of public broadcasting content, and make it available to the
American public. We look forward to working with the House and Senate
Judiciary Committees as the process moves forward.”
Prue Adler, Associate Executive Director of the Association of Research
Libraries, said: “The library community is very encouraged by the
introduction of these bills. Solving the orphan works problem is one of the
library community’s top legislative priorities. We look forward to working
with both chambers to fashion an effective framework that will encourage
socially productive uses of culturally and historically significant works
whose copyright owners cannot be identified or located.”
--
Marcos Sueiro Bal
Audio/Moving Image Archivist
Preservation Division
Columbia University