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Re: [ARSCLIST] ARSCNY
My apologies to the list for this posting, obviously meant for Dave
Nolan --Marcos
Marcos Sueiro Bal wrote:
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