Re: what are orphan works?

On Sep 28, 2009, at 1:57 PM, joseph harris wrote:
>
> It is highly unlikely that any publisher of the books held rights  
> for more than about five years, and these would probably have been  
> renewed for subsequent editions. It might be worth contacting our  
> National Library to see if there is information on standard  
> contracts of the period. It is also likely that records of the  
> publishers exist, and any purchase of the companies should be on  
> record.
>

Joseph,

This is exactly the problem. Almost no one can afford to take even  
"highly unlikely" risks when the survival of their business is in the  
offing. More than an outright prohibition, this is hat you'd call a  
"chilling effect." It causes publishers to error strongly on the side  
of caution and not touch ANYTHING that doesn't have complete and  
ensured provenance. As a practical result--perhaps not a legal or  
theoretical result, but as a **practical** one--books don't get  
republished, chapters cannot be used for college classes, and memoirs  
get lost in the dust of generations where there may be tens if not a  
hundred or more potential copyright holders. Anyone who has ever does  
a genealogy can tell you how lost and tangled things can get in even  
three or four generations.

The problem that everyone here has in trying to convince you of what  
is patently obvious is, as we say in science and tech journalism, the  
plural of "anecdote" is not "data." It's very easy for you to give a  
pat answer with "highly unlikelies" and "US inheritance laws" but that  
addresses--and only theoretically, not practically--these anecdotes,  
NOT the widespread problem.

Who **knows** how big the orphan works problem IS, except that  
EVERYONE seems to have an anecdote and there is a consensus among  
many, many, many people in the business that yes, the preponderance of  
those anecdotes DO somehow add up to data. It may be that Google,  
which is one of VERY few entities dealing with orphan works on a grand  
scale is the only entity with any real data on the scale of the problem.

The sorry thing is that Congress has not addressed this with  
meaningful legislation. Under the thumb of the big IP interests--and  
believe you me, they serve NO ONE but the big money, big Ip interests-- 
congress has done nothing on what becomes an increasingly more  
pressing problem. Consensus grows while Disney flies around the  
capitol shouting "mine mine mine" in the ears of our congressional  
"representation" like a bunch of gulls raining down money instead of  
bird shit (gotta love the sly "Nemo" reference there). But the  
consensus of librarians, small publishers and even some authors can't  
break through the logjam that is Washington. As a result, nothing gets  
done. And it's left to private entities with dubious ability to even  
negotiate something of this scale (who says that Author's farking  
Guild represents me or my future copyright holders!) to do SOMETHING  
about the growing problem for which there is consensus but no data.

dej
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