Monday, April 28, 2008

Orphan Works Update

Lots of coverage of the revised orphan works legislation introduced last week in Congress. The Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes:

"Lawmakers who lead committees on intellectual-property issues on Thursday introduced legislation that would exempt scholars and others from facing excessive copyright-infringement penalties for using orphan works. They would need to first diligently try to locate the works’ owners. Should the owners surface after a work has been reused they would receive some compensation, but could not stop the derivative creation from being distributed."

More from Ars Technica and from Daryl Lang in Photo District News.

I wrote about an earlier version of the legislation here and here.