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

jon wrote:

> joseph harris wrote:

[snip]

>> 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.

For Project Gutenberg this is undoubtedly true, for PG tends to apply 
some pretty vague rules which to some extent /mandate/ discarding 
valuable metadata.

The Internet Archive, on the other hand, goes to the opposite extreme, 
by archiving primarily page scans of original works; what OCR they have 
performed on the scans is of quite poor quality and is hidden 
away--although it can be retrieved if you know where to look. While I 
would rather have high quality digital text (which IA does not provide) 
for computer analysis and display, at least IA seems to preserve the 
whole original, in color, which might eventually be used to create 
digital books. I can't imagine what can be lost from the original using 
the IA system. It may not be as good as it could be, but it's as good, 
and probably better, as what you get from microfilm or storing paper 
books which decompose.

> But given the system of Statutory Deposit that has operated in the 
> English-speaking world at least for many decades now, there are vast
> numbers of books on library shelves -- or in filing cabinets in
> locked rooms, or underground vaults.

Or at least given the system of Statutory Deposit that operated (past 
tense) in the United States. Prior to the Berne Convention 
Implementation Act in 1988, an author or author's licensee was required 
to register a copyright and deposit a copy of the copyrighted work with 
the Library of Congress before being able to prosecute a copyright 
violation under federal copyright statutes. This was considered to be an 
impermissible "formality" under the Berne Treaty, and was repealed 
(although still encouraged). Because registration and deposition is a 
financial burden, my guess is that some of the (perhaps) unintended 
consequences of implementing the Berne treaty will be to /increase/ the 
number of orphan works, and /decrease/ the preservation of current works 
into the future.


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