Orphan works
If you don’t normally read Walt Crawford’s Cites & Insights, you should at least peruse the clear and informative section on orphan works (full PDF issue here). I shamefacedly confess I haven’t been paying as much attention to this as I ought, mostly because these things take on the character of airplane crashes—they’re lovely to watch in the air, but the crash when something goes wrong is just agony.
I hope the Copyright Office does something sensible about orphan works. I’m not sanguine, not at all.
Anyway, it’s a great summation and you should read it. I didn’t find any opinions therein with which I disagreed, but even if you aren’t of similar opinion, the materials Walt excerpts or summarizes are required reading. (If you’re a copyright hawk, you should read it just to learn which of your more lunatical fellows need to be curbed, frankly. Some of these folks aren’t doing your cause any good at all.)
The blog article I don’t have much to say about, except that as usual Walt is far kinder to CavLec and me than either deserves. I hope Walt repeats the experiment eventually, because the library world has a lot of stellar up-and-comers who shouldn’t be shoved aside just because I happen to have been around longer. (Not that Walt was disrespectful, not at all, but longevity does count for something in this game—sometimes too much.)