Bad news for users of orphan works

Bad news. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today against the Internet Archive and Prelinger Associates in Kahle v. Gonzales.

The central issue was the elmination of the renewal requirement for some older works. Renewal served as a filter that passed certain works — mostly those without commercial value — into the public domain. Along the requirements of registration and notice (also gone now), renewal requirements created an “opt-in” system of copyright.

This meant that only a small percentage of works were protected for the maximum term. The Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term
Extension Act changed the system to "opt-out."  That is, everything with any shred of originality, once put into a fixed form, is automatically copyrighted, with no need for registrations, renewals, or even the copyright notice.  If you write something, even a dumb email, it's copyrighted.  You have to affirmatively take a step to dedicate your dumb email to the public domain.

"What is at stake is libraries being able to have out-of-print books on their digital bookshelves as they have out-of-print books on the physical shelves we grew up with," Kahle wrote in November when arguments were heard in the case, according to Reuters.

See also Kahle's lament post decision.