Slashdot Mirror
Internet Archive Seeks Same Online Book Rights As Google
Miracle Jones writes "Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has jumped on Google's 'Authors Guild' settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive's letter to Judge Denny Chin: 'The Archive's text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.'"
The issue seems fairly obvious to solve, to me: You, as the copyright holder, must submit a copy of the document to the Library of Congress for storage in high-resolution (or whatever the content equivalent is), and must send them a registered letter or similar once a year for your work to be declared not orphaned.
If they don't receive a letter two years in a row, it becomes orphaned, but if you keep sending in letters, your copyright will continue until it expires.
A due-diligence search would therefore simply involve searching the LOC.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance