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"Who loses out? The reader, the public, the people you want to spread the history to"

By Intellectual Property Law, Esq.

EFF's Richard Esguerra spots "a clear, real-life example of the orphan works problem" in this recent New York Times article on a local high school history teacher and labor-of-love publisher of books of historical Brooklyn photographs who has been blocked from using certain orphan photographs in his forthcoming book on Canarsie:

"Deborah Schwartz, president of the [Brooklyn] historical society ... said Wednesday that the society was only trying to follow the letter of copyright law. The holders of the copyrights for the pictures ? one taken around 1895 and the other in the early 20th century ? are unknown, she said, and without permission from them or their estates, the photos cannot be reused for a commercial endeavor. ... 'We would like to accommodate him, but we can?t do that until we?re sure that we have the copyright,' Ms. Schwartz said. 'It?s kind of a drag on some level,' she added. 'On the other hand, it?s a law that?s designed to protect artists, photographers, because it?s their work.'"

Says Esguerra: "So, there's orphan works problem in a nutshell: both creativity and commerce are in suspended animation, with no one -- not the photographer/copyright owner, not the archive, not the publisher -- able to express, document, or profit from the works in question."

Full post as published by The Art Law Blog on July 09, 2008 (boomark / email).