Won't someone think of the orphan copyrights?

By Cory Doctorow at 6:34 am Tuesday, Mar 8

The OrphanWorks project is collecting comments for the Copyright Office in which people tell their stories to build the case for a new copyright law that would let the public rescue "orphaned" material -- works where no copyright holder could be found for out-of-print stuff. On the FreeCulture blog, they're publishing some of the comments they've collected -- if you haven't commented yet, you should!

The DigiBarn Computer Museum is engaged in an online project to tell the whole 30 year story of personal computing, its culture and people. We have over 50,000 objects on our web site, many of which are "orphaned works" (scans of brochures, photographs, video and audio clips, text, articles, etc) from now defunct firms. We have a statement on every page on our site offering to remove works if the original copyright holder objects. In 5 years we have never once been challenged about any one of the works on our web site suggesting that a large part of these materials are in fact bona fide orphaned works. However, as professional and amateur historians we could very much utilize a formal definition of what constitutes an orphaned work. This will greatly clarify use of this material and the work of this large group of historians...

A couple of years ago, my in-laws were going to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, so my wife and I decided to throw them a party. In preparation, I took old portrait photos of my in-laws to a local photo shop to have enlargements made (we wanted to display the enlargements at the party). The photo shop refused to make copies of the photos, since...according to the shop, the shop that took the photos still had the copyright, and they could get in trouble for making copies. The facts that a) the photos were at least 40 years old, b) we had no idea what portrait studio originally took the photos, much less if it still existed, c) my in-laws *hired* the studios to take the photos in the first place, and d) the enlargements would only be displayed in a private party...all made no difference. The shop's fear of the potential penalties for even this extraordinary slight chance of copyright violation kept them for performing the enlargements (not to mention making a hundred bucks in the process). So we don't get to have a nice little surprise at a family party, and a local business doesn't get to make a little money, all because of an unfortunate clause in copyright law.

Link (Thanks, Gavin!)