My apologies for the cross-posting. This topic is important across
several of our communities and would benefit from our coming together as
a whole to deal with this. (01)
As scc_active folks may rembember, Kathe Gust recently posted to a link
to document on orphan works. (02)
For those who don't know, the US Copyright Office has recently completed
a 200 page report on the orphan works, what they are, and why the
current law creates this problem. (03)
http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/ (04)
Among other things, the Copyright Office report makes recommendations to
Congress that the law be changed, precisely to handle cases such as ours. (05)
While there has been some interest by Congress in this report
(specifically noted are Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Patrick Leahy),
existing efforts, such as the so-called Preservation of Orphan Works Act
have not been successful.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h108-5136 (06)
Current US Copyright law regarding reproduction by libraries and
archives is insufficient to allow software preservation projects such as
those within the Computer History Museum to flourish.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000108----000-.html (07)
The copyrights on software works that the CHM is interested in are
typically owned by corporations that have bought and acquired divisions
multiple times over a number of years, and they do not even know if they
own they copyright in some cases. (08)
Indeed, the effort undertaken by volunteers to attempt to locate
copyright ownership of works has already been substantial. And it will
have to be repeated for each and every project that the CHM plans to
preserve. The current law is hampering efforts by libraries and museums
to perform the important services that they are dedicated to doing. (09)
There are other efforts to promote awareness of this problem.
http://eldred.cc/ (010)
Some efforts are underway to turn the dry topic of intellectual property
into a kind of cultural environmentalism that can be understand and
passionally endorsed by the average person.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cc8e24ce-a242-11da-9096-0000779e2340.html (011)
It would behoove our community to act in a unified manner and start
discussing what can be done to improve the process in which software is
legally allowed to be preserved by the CHM, and other non-profit groups
with an interest in preservation of the software. (012)
Plan For Action (013)
I'd like to see a consolidated plan for action by members in our community. (014)
Here are a few first ideas that I'll put out. What ideas do others think
we can do to build a concrete plan of action? (015)
1. Attend the "Cultural Environmentalism" conference at Stanford, March
11-12.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/conferences/cultural/ (016)
Is anyone available to go to this? (017)
2. Engage the attention of one or more politicians to our predicament.
We need to make a much stronger connection with the people who we have
entrusted to write our laws. (018)
Do we have anyone in our community who knows any senators or
representatives personally? (019)
3. Within the CHM SCC, develop a process and best practices guidelines
(we can avoid the buzzwords though :-) for current and future projects
within the SCC to handle legal logistics for projects. (020)
People who have already worked on a number of projects can give valuable
input into the legal process they have undertaken. (021)
Does anyone have input they could give towards developing a standard
process? (022)
Jonathan (023)
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