[SCC_Active_Members] Heads Up - Copyright Law and Orphan Works

[H.M. Gladney]

Asking only for preservation permission would drive one towards a "dark
archive"--i.e., a collection subset that could not be freely disseminated.  

This possibility is not only unattractive, but is likely to incur
significant extra administrative costs compared to a repository that makes
all its preserved holdings available.  It further is a potential source of
infringement litigation in the case of a "dark" holding that is mistakenly
made available.

I.e., in my view, CHM should not endorse this possibility.

Cheerio, HMG 
-----Original Message-----
From: scc_active-bounces at computerhistory.org
[mailto:scc_active-bounces at computerhistory.org] On Behalf Of Paul McJones
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 3:14 PM
To: Sellam Ismail
Cc: Lee Courtney; scc_active at computerhistory.org
Subject: Re: [SCC_Active_Members] Heads Up - Copyright Law and Orphan Works

For the purposes of preservation and historical/educational use, would it be
necessary to ask that these "orphaned" works pass into the public domain?
Perhaps there is a less final status that would suffice for us, such as
saying that it would become legal to copy for purposes of preservation, etc.
If the original copyright holder later spoke up (before the copyright term
expired), he/she could still try to go after commercial users.

I'm not sure if my idea makes legal sense, but the idea is to ask for as
little as possible...


Paul


Sellam Ismail wrote:
>>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. ...