FreeGameDev

There may be legislation in the works in America for making copyright more open, based on this governmental report.

The report's conclusion:

"Both the use of individual orphan works and mass digitization offer considerable opportunities for the diffusion of creativity and learning. Too often, however, the public is deprived of the full benefit of such uses, not because rightsholders and users cannot agree to terms, but because a lack of information or inefficiencies in the licensing process prevent such negotiations from occurring in the first place. As countries around the world are increasingly recognizing, these obstacles to clearance are highly detrimental to a well-functioning copyright system in the twenty-first century. The Office thus agrees that a solution for the United States is 'desperately needed'.

For orphan works, the Office recommends the adoption of a modified version of the 2008 Shawn Bentley Act that would limit the infringement remedies available against a user who has undertaken a good faith diligent search for the rightsholder and completed certain notice and attribution requirements. For mass digitization, a comprehensive solution likely would require legislation establishing an ECL option, which we believe should initially take the form of a limited pilot program developed through additional stakeholder outreach and discussion. Should Congress wish to consider an ECL model, we recommend that any legislation follow the general framework described here notably, that it be limited, at least at the outset, to projects serving nonprofit educational and research purposes and that it provide an express opt-out right for copyright owners. Ultimately, the Office concludes that legislation addressing both orphan works and mass digitization could do much to further the objectives of the copyright system by providing legal certainty to users, establishing reliable mechanisms for the compensation of authors, and making vast numbers of long forgotten works available for the public good."

Right, but could you translate for mere mortals?

While it is good to see some movement in that regard, both of the suggestions (but IANAL), will not have much impact on what the open-source movement is about.

@Evropi: to my understanding they propose the following:
1. Orphan Works are materials still under copyright, but it is nearly impossible to figure out who actually owns the rights (and that person/company most of the time is not even aware of it themselves). For these they propose that if you did a good attempt to figure out the owner (but failed), that owner can not or only to a very limited amount sue you for copyright infringement later on. Basically this lowers the risk for using orphan works.
2. Research and education institutions should be allowed to create digital version of documents (aka large scale scanning and archiving project) without having to contact every copyright holder first (but have an easy and quick way for them to remove the material if they so desire).

Both suggestions are pretty reasonable, but IMHO do not really change anything about the fundamental issues with today's copyright laws.

Julius {l Wrote}:While it is good to see some movement in that regard, both of the suggestions (but IANAL), will not have much impact on what the open-source movement is about.

@Evropi: to my understanding they propose the following:
1. Orphan Works are materials still under copyright, but it is nearly impossible to figure out who actually owns the rights (and that person/company most of the time is not even aware of it themselves). For these they propose that if you did a good attempt to figure out the owner (but failed), that owner can not or only to a very limited amount sue you for copyright infringement later on. Basically this lowers the risk for using orphan works.
2. Research and education institutions should be allowed to create digital version of documents (aka large scale scanning and archiving project) without having to contact every copyright holder first (but have an easy and quick way for them to remove the material if they so desire).

Both suggestions are pretty reasonable, but IMHO do not really change anything about the fundamental issues with today's copyright laws.

Yes, that was also my impression, but I thought it could be a step in the right direction, and it would help achieve the goals of the open source movement even if not directly related. And once the copyright regime has been recognized as deficient (in that it allows too little freedom for users), there is a greater chance that further reform will come.

Why not make some default fixed percent profit-share for the users of work? Say owner of copyright is entitled to 80% of profits resulted from the use of his work?

That would be good default, unless author explicitly forbade the use of his work without licensing it (i.e. "don't use without permission"). That would immediately make all licenses clear.

Don't be silly. With that system, you could have to pay 160% of the "profits" to other people. In other words, charge $10.00, and you'd be paying $6 for the privilege of giving copies to someone else. That's just silly.

Not that it's relevant, anyway. This is a document describing the specific problem of orphan works and suggesting solutions to that problem.

onpon4 {l Wrote}:Don't be silly. With that system, you would have to pay 160% of the "profits" to other people.

That should depend on the magnitude of the use of the work, compared to all other works inside of some grander work. Although some people would argue that the whole is more than the sum of it's parts.

Then each work has a lot of subjective qualities, like a photo of Obama obviously costs orders of magnitude more than say my photo. But no one would be able to state the exact price.

It sounds interesting, but I have to agree with onpon4. It can costs 160% of the "profits".