The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) today filed reply comments (PDF) with the US Copyright Office in response to the office’s October 22, 2012, Notice of Inquiry (NOI) about the current state of play with orphan works and mass digitization.
LCA reviewed the comments filed to date and concluded that “the significant diversity of opinion expressed in the initial comments submitted in the response to the Copyright Office’s Notice of Inquiry Concerning Orphan Works and Mass Digitization indicates that it will be extremely difficult to forge a consensus approach to these issues…In light of these fundamental disagreements, LCA recommends that the Copyright Office pursue non-legislative solutions such as continuing to make the Copyright Office records more accessible. Moreover, the Office should seek to bolster fair use in both judicial and international fora. If the Copyright Office does decide to recommend a legislative solution, the only approach likely to achieve consensus is, as we suggested in our initial comments, a one sentence amendment to 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2) that grants courts the discretion to reduce or remit statutory damages if the user conducted a reasonably diligent search prior to the use.”
Download LCA’s original comments (PDF) to the Copyright Office.
View the full list of comments on the Copyright Office’s website.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
