Saturday, February 12, 2005

Save the Orphans!

The Copyright Office is asking for public comment on its policy concerning Orphan Works. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, basically the problem is this: what do you do if you'd like to incorporate something that may still be copyrighted into a work, but you have no idea how to locate the copyright owner (if it even has one)? The Copyright Office has recently realized that this can be a real problem--especially now that the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act was held constitutional. Anyway, this is an important opportunity for artists and scholars to tell the Copyright Office that it has to make it easier to use Orphan works (such as creating an exemption from infringement when the user has made a good faith effort to find the copyright owner to no avail). It's taking submissions until March 25, 2005. This is a great way to get involved in the beautiful world of Administrative Law.

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