RE: Darnton on the Google settlement

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

We are back with the question of "orphan works," David. In a way, 
the Google settlement is a sweeping, catch-all answer to that 
problem, and publishers, who want to settle that problem as much 
as librarians and scholars do, conceded to Google this entire 
vast domain of works to Google's default position: include them 
in the database unless rightsholders come forward to identify 
themselves. Some fraction of the out-of-print books, publishers 
will discover, will fall into this category, and one virtue of 
the settlement, as you note, is that these books will be 
available in the system until an owner steps forward to claim 
them.

Sandy Thatcher

>Certainly, I am being flippant.  But I do find the idea of a
>cut-off rather depressing.  It sweeps into a fenced-off area of
>control works that may be in the public domain, or where the
>ownership can only be determined with great difficulty if at all,
>or where if they knew the rights holders would be only to happy
>to allow their works to be fully digitised.  So we all lose out
>as we wait for the clock to tick down and for the deadline to
>creep forward year-by-year.
>
>But the opt-out option is much more interesting - I'm not going
>to argue about the legalities of it all as they have been
>rehashed over and over and also because I don't pretend to be an
>expert in the matter.  But the concept!  The concept that we
>include these works, but take them out if the rights holder
>objects, that's much more exciting.  It brings more works into
>the project, it respects the rights of the owners, and it allows
>readers like me to find more titles that deal with topics of
>interest.
>
>If I can come down to earth with a sincere question: what can a
>publisher do with a title in their list where they don't know who
>owns the rights?
>
>David