Iowa Arts News is a monthly publication of the Iowa Arts Council. If you would like to subscribe, please send us a blank e-mail.
Adventures in Locating Copyright Owners
Have you ever wanted to use a copyrighted work but been unable to locate the owner to clear the rights? Many artists, authors, musicians, filmmakers, librarians, scholars and others have run into the same problem—a problem that has hobbled their ability to create, innovate, and educate.
The U.S. Copyright Office, encouraged by influential members of Congress, wants to do something to make it easier to locate copyright holders. But before the Copyright Office can recommend a fix for this problem, it needs a lot of evidence that there is a problem—in short, it needs your stories.
The Copyright Office is seeking comments from any and all individuals and institutions about issues raised by “orphan works.” This term means “works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to locate.”
Anybody can offer a comment, but the Copyright Office has specifically invited comments from creators who have run up against the difficulty of trying to clear a potentially copyrighted work—either for use in a new creative effort or simply to make the work once again available to the public.
For more information, visit www.orphanworks.org.
