Orphan Works Comments of the Internet Archive

Abstract

Comments of The Internet Archive regarding orphan works in response to the Notice of Inquiry issued by U.S. Copyright Office. Orphan works — works for which the owner of the copyright in the work is difficult or even impossible to locate — raise difficult problems for libraries and archives. In other contexts the Internet Archive and other libraries and archives have developed practical, workable solutions to related problems, and we suggest that the Copyright Office and Congress could craft a plan for orphan works that draws from, and builds on, these real-world solutions. The Internet Archive is a nonprofit library that has collected billions of works (books, music, moving images, web pages, and software programs) and served millions of users since 1996. The Internet Archive works with the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the British National Archives as well as policymakers and standards committees to find workable solutions to libraries’ and archives’ missions in the digital world.

In these comments, we identify various problems that archives and libraries now experience with respect to orphan works, and real-world solutions that we recommend. We also identify several solutions that we developed in response to similar problems in other contexts, which we hope can be used as a foundation for a solution to the orphan works problem.