Quote:
Originally Posted by spellbanisher
When Google first made its settlement with the authors guild, there was legislation in congress that would have provided a means and a procedure for orphan works to enter the public domain. But when google and the guild settled the orphan works legislation died in the house.
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Uh... I'm not really sure how you came up with that sequence of events.
As also happened in the UK, professional photographers (far from a powerful corporate interest btw) lobbied against the bill. Photographers constantly get their work get ripped off, and they were concerned that the law as written would provide a massive loophole for art directors, ad agencies and other commercial entities.
The opposition had nothing to do with the Google Books issues, as far as I can tell. Nor did big corporations have much to do with it not passing into law.
I might add, it's not like Google has to delete the scans; they just can't use the material until copyright expires or they bother to get the rights. Most of the material was inaccessible anyway, since it's basically sitting in university libraries.
Legislators need to figure out a way to deal with orphan works that won't gut copyright or put independent content creators out of business. It's not an easy task. But it's not only better, but it's legally and constitutionally required for this to be fixed via legislation rather than in a courtroom.