The question of orphan works is interesting and important, but, like so many
interesting and important side-issues (1) it is not central to Open Access,
(2) it risks becoming yet another distraction from Open Access, and (3) if
we can just stay focused on providing Open Access (by self-archiving, and
mandating the self-archiving of the current refereed journal literature),
that Open Access itself will be the greatest asset to ensuring that orphan
works are, in their turn, made Open Access wherever possible. (The very same
is true of all the other prominent distractors from doing the optimal,
inevitable and long overdue, insofar as OA is concerned: Copyright reform,
CC licensing, publishing reform, digital preservation, the gray literature,
open books, other open media, open data, open software -- all of these will
benefit enormously once OA prevails. But right now, when we need to keep
focussed on the reachable objective that we have for over a decade failed to
grasp, we must not let ourselves keep getting distracted.)
Stevan Harnad
On 28-Apr-08, at 11:10 AM, Bernard Lang wrote:
> The issue of Orphan Works is more and more discussed in various places.
>
> Orphan works are works whose right holders cannot be located, for
> example to ask permission to use their work.
>
> Few countries have a legislation on orphan works, but many are
> preparing some.
>
> I do not recall that the issue has been discussed on this list, and it
> is not immediately clear whether it should.
>
> However, my own knowledge of the issue and of some current proposals
> lead me to believe that we should pay attention to it. One proposal I
> know of would, for example, place any orphan work in the custody on
> collective copyright management. And collective management
> organizations are not exactly the best friends of open archives.
> Indeed, the proposal I have in mind is strongly pushed by publisher
> associations, and did reach a fairly high political level.
>
> More generally, there are many people who consider that making
> anything available for free (and devoid of advertising) should be
> somehow forbidden, and be considered a threat to free market,
> democracy, and other free world values. I am unfortunately not
> joking.
>
> Questions :
>
> - do you know whether the issue is raised in the context of open-access ?
>
> - where ?
>
> - should it be discussed, and where or how ?
>
>
> Bernard Lang
>
>
> --
> Le brevet logiciel menace votre entreprise
> Software patents threaten your company
> Soutenez la Majorité Économique - Support the Economic Majority
> http://www.economic-majority.com/
>
> Bernard.Lang_at_inria.fr ,_ /\o \o/ Tel +33 1 3963 5644
> http://bat8.inria.fr/~lang/ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Fax +33 1 3963 5469
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> Je n'exprime que mon opinion - I express only my opinion
Received on Mon Apr 28 2008 - 19:03:50 BST