Want to poke a stick into a hornet's nest? Bring up orphan works.
The ideal, from Maria Pallante of the U.S. Copyright Office: "Think about the person who wants to do the right thing. They want to pay that creator money to use that image. How do they do that? That's what were trying to solve. This is the credibility of the copyright system at stake."
The reality, from the audience: "We're talking about powerful corporations that are going to use these photos for financial gain. You cannot ask someone who has motivations that are diametrically opposed to mine to do a diligent search. Good faith does not exist in corporate culture."
From a Getty representative: "We do $20M in unauthorized revenue. We miss a lot more. The consumer has no incentive to pay for their use."
From Jonathan Band, a lawyer on the panel: "I'm amazed at the level of hostility you have for your customers."
The technological solution from Microsoft: "If you tackle those problems about metadata, about identifying who owns the photograph, how they can find the owners, if those get tackled, you're essentially defining what reasonable search is."
From David Trust, PPA: "This is scary to sit in front of you and say what I'm about to say. These guys are not the dark lords. They represent some serious interests. The public is on their side. Congress is on their side. Our best friends in Congress are saying, this is going to happen. There will be orphan works this year, probably before October. We can sit here and rattle our sabers, but are you really willing to fall on your sword? Because you will. We have to accept that it's not going to be legislation that we want."
Ouch! I'm afraid David is right. It is quite hard for a user/customer to "do the right thing" and that is an excellent excuse not to.
Posted by: Bruce Nall | July 11, 2007 at 06:09 PM