Orphans in the Copyright Wilderness

by David Heath

Tuesday, 20 May 2008

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You might be surprised to learn that this proposal is almost exactly in agreement with a suggestion from Lawrence Lessig in his book “Free Culture” (http://www.free-culture.cc/) – I suggest you start reading from page 287.

Summarising some of the more strident sites, let’s have a look at some of the main objections.

If you don’t register your work, anyone can steal it. No, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has changed with copyright law. This is ONLY about how to deal with Orphaned Works. Even then, there are procedures to follow if the owner is later identified.

If you don’t register you work with EVERY registry then ‘users’ of your work can simply say they looked on one of them and didn’t find it. No, that would clearly fall very short of a “diligent search.”

Copyright owners of limited financial means cannot afford to pay to protect their works. Why pay? Surely there are plenty of opportunities for a public-domain advertising-supported website to identify the work and the owner (come in Google!). And it should be incumbent upon the owner to ensure his contact information remains current. How hard is that if he values his work?

Cottage industries will be destroyed - anyone can copy what they do. I'm sorry, how is that any different from the current state of affairs? As much as anyone appreciates such endeavours, they create themed work - it simply isn't possible to copyright the projection of a concept.

Yes, on balance I'm in favour of this legislation. It used to be that a picture was worth a thousand words. If only we could return to such low-budget days – these days, it seems to cost over a million!

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