Talk:Orphan works in the United States

Berkeley symposium

Just wanted to make a note for future contributors to this article that lots of good info can be found here [1], a recent symposium at Berkeley with experts from around the country discussing the Orphan works problem. All of their slides, and some transcripts, are on this website. (I had added this on the external links section as well.) --Yushan717 (talk) 05:30, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

POV

I had come to this article looking for a balanced analysis on this issue and a discussion of arguments on both sides, but what I find here has a very pro "orphan works" bias (in favor of allowing use of works labeled as such without compensation). The article discusses this posistion only as something beneficial. It also discusses as a "problem" the fact that creative content in the US is now automatically copyright. Some may view this as a problem, but for many amatur artists this provision is a blessing. Many artists lack the time and resources to actively register and keep watch over every piece of content they create. So naturally there are some very serious concerns. A big corporation could use an independent artist's work and make large profits without the artist receiving any compensation. This article here discusses these sorts of issues regarding recently passed legislation in the UK, and there are numerous others online which do the same. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab Hopefully this article can be changed to express a more balnanced view of the issue. -Helvetica (talk) 20:58, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

As I said in Talk:Orphan_works#POV, Copyright collectives seem to be similar to the solution Helvetica is criticizing, but are able to cause the same problems even with obviously non-orphan works. --AVRS (talk) 23:04, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

New Report on Orphan Works

Hello,

I'm not familiar enough with the Wikipedia guidelines to edit this article, but I wanted to let you know that the Copyright Office just released a new report on Orphan Works: US Copyright - Orphan

Thanks for all your work!

2602:306:36E3:2910:E82D:A7FE:7FA9:B5CB (talk) 00:55, 6 July 2015 (UTC)Amanda

References

Missing word

The first sentence of the article is misleading:

"An orphan work is a copyrighted work whose owner is impossible to identify or contact."

It should rather be

"An orphan work is a copyrighted work whose copyright owner is impossible to identify or contact."

(The owner of the work itself may very well be known, but he doesn't count in terms of copyright.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.155.170.42 (talk) 14:32, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I think that's a good correction. I just made a slightly different one to avoid the awkward over-use of "copyright" ("...is a work whose copyright owner..."). The Copyright Office interestingly, makes the same gloss: "...'orphan works,' a term used to describe the situation where the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be identified and located..." But we know what they mean and there's no reason we need to carry forward that lack of clarity. TJRC (talk) 15:45, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Sorry to be persistent, but - 'awkward over-use' aside, it seems equally essential to stress that the works in question are still copyrighted, contrary to a widespread misbelief (among non-experts in copyright matters) that they're somehow kind of public domain, which they're clearly not, that's the whole point, isn't it?

Here's another proposal. The general article on orphan works (not this US-related one) has a similar phrase using the term 'rightsholder'; how about avoiding the awkward over-use this way:

"An orphan work is a copyrighted work whose rightsholder is impossible to identify or contact." 80.155.170.42 (talk) 10:07, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Needless surplusage, I think. A work that is not under copyright does not have a copyright owner. TJRC (talk) 01:48, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Sure. But the definition "a work whose copyright owner is impossible to identify or contact" would, per se, also be true of all works in public domain - they don't have a copyright owner, and something that doesn't exist is, logically, impossible to identify or contact as well. So, following this definition, a careless reader might get the idea that, ok, works in public domain are also orphan works, or one is a subset of the other, it's more or less the same - whereas the whole concept of orphan works is about making a clear distinction between the two, not blurring it. You're absolutely right, of course - being under copyright in the first place is somehow implicit in that definition. But wouldn't you rather make it explicit? As you said above: 'we know what they mean' is just not good enough in legal matters, wouldn't you agree? 80.155.170.42 (talk) 08:38, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of California, Berkeley supported by WikiProject Intellectual Property law and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2012 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:31, 2 January 2023 (UTC)