Re: what are orphan works?

On 9/27/09, joseph harris <[email protected]> wrote:
>  I am genuinely puzzled at what exactly people do expect to find that is of value. I'm not asking
> for either justification of the general idea, nor of the view opposing that. I don't think I've seen
> a fistful of actual examples, or even genuine areas that are going to produce this 'great
> benefit'.

As mentioned, movies & audio are one of the big concerns; waiting for
copyright to expire means losing them forever. And movies can have
several copyrights involved: screenwriter, production company, musical
scores, sometimes authors or poets who are quoted in the movie. Lack
of verification of *one* of those rights prevents it from being
digitized and released or remixed.

There are also entire publishing houses that have vanished. The
majority of "B-list authors," the non-bestsellers, have works that
have vanished. Publishing houses that produced lines of mysteries or
westerns in the 60's and either went under, or just stopped producing,
may be un-contactable, and the books themselves may have been listed
under pseudonyms.

The 70's and early 80's saw a rise in self-publishing, as printing
tech got cheaper. There are thousands of fanzines, protest zines,
chapbooks, club newsletters and other amateur productions, whose
creators are unknown (who was "Lady Theos," a Pagan priestess in Long
Island in 1970? If she can be identified, and is deceased, who
inherited her copyrights?).

Among the orphan works are many high school & college yearbooks. Some
of those have known, identified creators (often, with an additional
copyright of the photos being held by the photography company, which
may or may not still exist); some, especially if the school itself
shut down, are entirely orphaned. Someone trying to put together a
history of the city, or of educational patterns in a particular era,
would have a hard time tracking down anyone to even ask permission to
use those books.

Letters written by schoolchildren to soldiers in Viet Nam. Protest
zines created by college students in the same era (some of whom didn't
use their legal names to avoid retribution). Advertisements for
defunct companies, showing the values and interests of an era. Albums
by obscure bands, produced by tiny recording companies that later
vanished. TV commercials for fly-by-night companies with weird
products hoping to be the next craze. Demo tapes for garage bands,
sent to half a dozen production companies. Masters' thesis papers, of
which were made eight copies and mostly distributed to the author's
relatives, but enough to qualify as "published"--some of which contain
incredible insights that got ignored as the person grew up & got a job
in a bookstore, or at a machine lab.

The sheer scope of orphaned works is enough to make a historian weep.

Not that all of those things are of wonderful, artistic value. But
some do, and more contain aspects of our heritage and culture that
shouldn't be allowed to vanish--and they're all locked away right now,
unusable because the penalty of guessing wrong about who the
rightsholder is, or whether they'd grant permission, is too great to
risk.

-- 
"I follow Eris blindly in all things. That She is the Goddess of Chaos
simplifies this immensely."  -- Christian the Pagan


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