orphans, doing something (was what are orphan works?)

From: "Erica Frank" 
> On 9/27/09, joseph harris <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>>  But again that would be quite different from offering a power to all and sundry - especially
>> big and powerful players - to take anything they fancied and defy owners to sue.
> 
> That, I grant. There are some serious problems with the suggested
> orphan works legislation I've seen, and Google's settlement workaround
> is a fascinating bit of sidestepping the real issues.
> 
> But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of doing
> SOMETHING, ANYTHING to address the problem--poorly-worded blurry
> legislation that grants too much power to some groups might be better
> than the current state of cultural gridlock, where nobody with less
> money than Google can risk bringing these works back to the public.
> 

I hadn't intended to comment any more on orphans for the moment. First let me say, Erica, that your survey of the pitfalls and your further advice to my comments to Chris on his MS were an excellent coverage. If Chris has not looked at any of that before he now has a schedule to pursue ;-).

I was struck by your last paragraph; to the extent I recognise the strong frustration some, like yourself, feel on this matter. But again I warn over falling into Google's honeypot.

Google has no intention of searching out orphans that are not either on library bookshelves that it can scavenge, or produced into public domain by efforts like those of Gutenberg [Gutenberg handles only public domain works of course]. I have absolutely no idea what serves research and culture best in this, but sometimes the whole original contains much which any digital copying will lose.

In short, I am not sure now much any efforts by Google - who's objective, by company law, is profit - will really help.

Joseph

Joseph Harris  -  Debt Control Man
author: Control Your Debt Crisis on Your Own Terms
blog: http://debtcontrolman.wordpress.com
http://www.controlyourdebtcrisis.co.uk
debt dictionary: http://www.controlyourdebtcrisis.co.uk/debtwiki/


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