Lawrence Lessig and his legal team are asking for your help. Kahle v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit that challenges changes to U.S. copyright law that have created a large class of "orphan works" -- creative works which are out of print and no longer commercially available, but which are still regulated by copyright. To help win the lawsuit, we are looking for more examples of people being burdened by these copyright-related barriers to the use of orphan works. Visit the Kahle Submission Site and tell us your story.
Thanks very much.
Joe Gratz
Stanford CIS
Additional note from Mary Minow: Librarians and archivists generally define "orphan works" more narrowly - to refer to works that have no copyright owners that can be found through "reasonable efforts." That is, a university press that is still in business may have o.p. material, but is easy to find to request permissions. This is not the case for many of library/archive/museum collections that have old works with very limited publication (say a church newsletter) by dead authors. Finding heirs who have since had their own descendants and have no idea that they are the owners of these works is challenging to put it mildly. These are the best examples, in my opinion. Please contribute your sad stories of works that are not commercially viable that would add to our collective knowledge ... but that YOU WON'T DIGITIZE because the works are still in copyright. Works published from 1963-1977 are especially useful examples, since those are the years that had automatic copyright renewals.
Here are some more class action lawsuit announcements
Posted by: Gonzo | March 10, 2005 at 07:43 PM