[Advocacy Advisors] New UK government copyright rules on access to orphan works

[James Salsman]

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 at 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
>
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