Re. Hathi Orphans?

[<jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

Good point, Sandy. The "let go" makes sense here only if, through 
transfers, mergers, etc., some publishers actually own more than 
they themselves know. And they could not "let go" precisely 
because they would not know.

This said, if existing publishers provided clear lists of what 
they lay claims to, one could begin to have a better sense of 
what is really orphan. And publishers could still choose to "let 
go" titles that do not offer any foreseeable economic prospect. 
This already happens from time to time. And using books not on 
the consolidated list of publishers' property could be legislated 
to be equivalent to a diligent search.

The point that should be added is that the murky dimensions of 
orphan works obviously satisfy some of the stakeholders in this 
game.

Who should pay for monitoring the orphan issue? Well, not living 
in the United States, and, therefore, not being particularly 
worried about the size of governments, I have no problem saying 
that this would be a worthy task for a ministry of education, of 
culture, or both. If governments monitor the ownership of patents 
and trademarks, could they not monitor the ownership of 
copyrights?

All this brings us back to the issue of an international 
copyright registry, which would bring us back to pre-1976 times. 
This would be useful.

Jean-Claude Guedon


Le lundi 10 octobre 2011 18:55 -0400, Sandy Thatcher a ecrit:

> I'm not sure what you mean by "let go" here. Just because they 
> are orphans, they are, by definition, not owned by any existing 
> publishing house. They are books whose rights have been 
> transferred back to the authors or authors' heirs. What do 
> publishers have to gain by joining in an effort to 
> systematically identify the status of millions of orphan works, 
> the vast majority of which they will never have any reason to 
> use? Given that rights and permissions departments at many 
> publishing houses are understaffed and overworked, whom do you 
> propose should do this extra work, and who should pay for it? 
> There is collaboration on a case-by-case basis among 
> publishers. The AAUP, for example, has a listserv for rights 
> and permission staff to share information like this.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>>This is a marvellous point. If publishers honestly collaborated
>>on the task of identifying genuinely orphans, and if they also
>>made an honest effort to let go what has no obvious economic
>>value (in other words, get rid of the "just in case" mentality),
>>we could work together far more harmoniously.
>>
>>Jean-Claude Guedon
>>
>>PS And bravo to Princeton for the OA policy voted by the 
>>faculty on itself.
>>
>>
>>-------- Message d'origine--------
>>De: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu de la part de Liz Mengel
>>Date: mer. 28/09/2011 18:22
>>Objet : RE: Hathi Orphans
>>
>>What makes me wonder is, if the Authors Guild can find owners 
>>of orphan works so fast why they don't try to collaborate with 
>>these types of ventures instead of suing them?
>>
>>Liz Mengel
>>Associate Director Scholarly Resources and Special Collections
>>The Sheridan Libraries
>>Johns Hopkins University