Re: Google Print - Peter Brantley in Chronicle of Higher Ed

["adam hodgkin" <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

It is helpful to see the whole text (?) of this interview. In 
reply to Ann's point, I guess that Peter Brantley would maintain 
that there is a big difference between the way publishers should 
make money out of 'out of copyright' works and the way they 
should make money out of 'orphan copyrights'.

Mind you, there are reasonably well understood conventions on how 
republishers should handle certain orphan copyright situations -- 
so when ProQuest/Chadwyck Healey do a database of copyright-moot 
material that apperared in early 20C periodical publications, 
they go to some trouble to identify rights holders, they contact 
the successor publishers, they place advertisements listing the 
names of 100s of publishers, authors or journalists whose 
whereabouts are sought (such ads appear from time to time in the 
TLS or the LRB).

We may think that Brantley's fears are exaggerated; the issue of 
fair use of orphan copyright materials is hardly likely to be 
settled or narrowed through the current litigation. The 
technology is still exploding. Google is Google, but it is only 
Google. There are many likely forms of lowcost and disseminated 
scanning technolgies that will erode any convention that 
publishers, one search engine and one court might settle in 2009 
or 2010. We still dont know what is really possible and how it 
can be used. It is most unlikely that the publishers, with an eye 
to future possible litigaiton, could corale all the rights 
involved and speak for them in a way which would give Google a 
green light, still less a clear title.  An amazing collection of 
copyrights of various types is gathered in the printed works of 
one reasonable sized library (authors and contributors and 
editors, copyright in music, art and photographs, diagrams, 
typographical copyrights, limited rights in permitted quotations 
etc).

It is surely desirable that standards evolve and are agreed for 
what can be done with digital copies of incopyright material, but 
its inconceivable that they could arise from one case, however 
complex and protracted the litigation.

Adam