Wal-Mart = Copyfighter?
Specifically, Lisuzzo and Wal-Mart are pushing the
government to change the way it deals with “orphan works,” which are
described by the US Copyright Office as “copyrighted works whose owners
are difficult or even impossible to locate.” Orphan works can be literally
anything from an old film clip to a line of computer code to a haiku scribbled
on the back of a napkin. As the law stands, anyone who wants to reproduce an
orphan work or tweak it into some novel creation (à la sound collagists
Negativland) has to hunt down the copyright holder for permission or risk
getting sued.
Posted: Wed - September 7, 2005 at 06:22 PM