Re: Copyright Review Management System - U of Michigan IMLS grant

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

The number of variables here, however, would militate against any 
such easy systemization. E.g., the change of an estate's executor 
could dramatically affect whether that estate will or will not 
pursue a litigious strategy against users of the author's 
writings whom that estate serves to protect. Likewise for the 
change in management at a publishing house. Any "patterns" that 
might show up in a large-n statistical analysis would likely not 
help much in assessing risk at any given moment of time for any 
given author's estate, publishing house, or other type of 
copyright holder.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>So, is what we're really doing is measuring the risk that
>particular individuals or companies will sue?  There should be
>some way to statistically analyze that -- drug companies probably
>do that all the time balancing the risk the x percentage of users
>will die and sue vs. the profits from the 99 percent of people
>who benefit. That would be a useful tool -- one where you put in
>the various things you know about a book -publication date,
>subject, whether the author is dead, and it tells you the
>probability that you will have a problem.
>
>Karl Bridges
>University of Vermong
>
>
>Quoting "Harper, Georgia K" <gharper@austin.utexas.edu>:
>
>>  One of the things I learned early on in working with the Google
>>  Book Search project was that all one can really expect when
>>  seeking to "know" the copyright status of a work is to increase
>>  degree of certainty. After a point, it's a risk analysis issue,
>>  as so much of usage of older copyrighted works is. If your use is
>>  commercial, you probably require a higher level for your degree
>>  of certainty. If your use is nonprofit and educational and you
>>  interweave the risk analysis involved with relying on fair use
>>  into your risk matrix, you might be comfortable with a lower
>>  level for your degree of certainty. And, as you might suppose,
>>  the orphan works status of a work, also a matter of degree of
>>  certainty, figures into the risk analysis for use as well. So, to
>>  anyone not comfortable taking risks (well, assessing and taking),
>>  best to back away from trying to free books from analog
>>  obscurity. The easy cases are mostly already identified.
>>
>>  Georgia Harper
>>  Scholarly Communications Advisor
>>  University of Texas at Austin Libraries
>>  512.495.4653 (w); 512.971.4325 (cell)
>>  gharper@austin.utexas.edu