[SCC_Active_Members] Heads Up - Copyright Law and Orphan Works

[Sellam Ismail]

> I ran across a pointer to a request from Senate Judicary 
> Committee that the Library of Congress study impact of 
> orphaned works WRT to current copyright law. It appears 
> relevent to the SCC mission. Two questions, 1) how can this 
> affect us in acheiving our goals, and 2) should the Museum 
> comment on this issue WRT to software? OK three questions. 
> Also what changes would we like to see that would facilitate 
> the preservation and study of historic software?

I'm not sure if the committee presiding over this had software in mind,
but we should certainly draft some sort of formal response explaining
our position.  What is our position?  I believe it should be that
software for which there is no longer an apparent copyright holder
should be released into the public domain.  This is all the more
pressing since as we all know the bits are fading and if they don't make
exceptions for older copy protected software from the DMCA then we might
lose large bodies of software for good.

I'm not inclined to let the DMCA get in the way of preserving old
software (notwithstanding the fact that it's such a bad law to begin
with), but by raising these issues we may well achieve an impact beyond
the immediate concerns of the possibility of losing old software.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                 ismail at computerhistory.org
Curator of Software                           650/810-1046
Computer History Museum                       1401 N. Shoreline Blvd
Where Computing History Lives.                Mountain View, CA 94043