Orphan Copyright legislation

A rare positive development in intellectual property: action by the Copyright Office to address the problem of
orphan works. Here's how Lawrence Lessig explains it:

Thanks to some prodding by a couple of great US Senators, the copyright office is currently considering whether to recommend changes to copyright law that will make it easier and cheaper for you to use "orphaned works" -- works that remain under copyright but whose "owner" can't be found. As many of you have written me, this is a real problem that affects thousands of innovative people every year. But the copyright office still needs some convincing.

The Copyright Office has posted its Notice of Inquiryseeking comments; well worth your time. Key passage:

The Copyright Office has long shared these concerns about orphan works and has considered the issue to be worthy of further study. On January 5, Senators Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked the Register of Copyrights to study this issue and to report to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the end of the year. Also in January, Reps. Lamar Smith and Howard Berman, the chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, sent letters to the Register supporting this effort. The Office is gratified that Congress has shown an interest in this important issue and is pleased to assist Congress in its efforts to learn more about the problem and to consider appropriate solutions.

When you tell people you work in moving image preservation, they tend to say, "Oh, like old movies?" Frankly, I (and most of the students in my program at NYU) have little to no interest in working with Hollywood feature films. Casablanca will take care of itself, I say. Someone's got to worry about the stuff that'll never make DVD.