Is the Foundation prepared to take a stand on political candidates with
platforms and records indicating that they support such reforms? Or are we
just hoping that whoever gets elected will listen to us instead of their
contributors?
On Thursday, October 30, 2014, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
The situation in the US is even worse. There is no
orphan works
legislation in the U.S. whatsoever, so if you can't locate the author, you
can't use the work (without significant financial risk). What's even worse
is that the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that doesn't
recognize the rule of the shorter term (despite it being recommended by the
Berne Convention), so a large number of works are orphan works in the U.S.
but public domain elsewhere.
Because there is no orphan works legislation in the U.S., there is some
potential for reform here. I just hope that we can steer that reform into
getting the U.S. to adopt the rule of the shorter term (which will actually
help the Wikimedia projects), rather than just a band-aid tailored
specifically for GLAM institutions (as many European countries have
adopted).
Ryan Kaldari