Internal:Public Policy/Orphan works
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- This is a draft of the Public Policy Committee's report to the Board of Directors on the subject of Orphan Works and Mass Digitization for the U. S. Copyright Office workshop on March 10–11, 2014.
Outline
- Background
- What are orphan works?
- How Wikimedia projects have benefited from public domain works: media in Commons, text in Wikisource and Wikipedia, etc.
- Wikimedia projects cannot currently use orphan works; how they would benefit from being able to use them to fulfill our educational mission.
- How are Wikimedia's needs different than the more well-known case of Google Books etc.?
- Which of the specific provisions being proposed would be best? Would some be too burdensome for use on Wikimedia projects?
Sources
- The workshop page
- A 2006 report on orphan works by the Copyright Office
- A 2011 background paper on mass digitization by the Copyright Office, especially see pp. 25ff
Examples
- The issue will be clear if we have examples to work from.
- I have a small one. I struggled with the decision about whether to use a photo of economist Robert Hoselitz that came from his family to illustrate the article about him. It wasn't clear what to do and I gave up, to the disappointment of people who had helped me. The original photographer could not be identified. Who held the copyright? How would I label it on Commons? I didn't want to end up in an argument. I'd already had to fight pretty hard to kill off a photo of someone else that was incorrectly labeled as a photo of Hoselitz. The photo was also quite dark--a side issue. To the point: if orphan works were a nicely available permission category on Commons, that would have helped me. -- Econterms (talk)
Proposal from Copyright Office
The 2006 proposal by the Copyright Office, summarized on p.8, about what to do about orphan works seems appropriate. I believe it did not become law. They may be holding these workshops to rebuild support for it or something like it. Basically it says the user of an orphan work has to make "diligent" efforts to find the proper owner and license it. The Copyright Office does or would have materials online to help the person search and "diligent" would be defined partly by evidence that the user had used those materials. Potential users who can't find the owner could use the material, labeling it as an orphan work. Seems good to me. Can we back that? And/or, is the labeling requirement excessive for Wikimedia? -- Econterms (talk)