National Writers' Union Testimony . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
March 29, 2006

(Editors note: Following is written testimony presented to the U.S House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property about proposed orphan works legislation by the National Writers' Union.)

COMMENT ON ORPHAN WORKS STUDY (70 FR 3739)
IN OPPOSITION TO U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE’S PROPOSAL
TO ALLOW COPYING OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS
WITHOUT THE RIGHTS OWNER’S KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION.

 

Gerard Colby
President, National Writers Union - UAW Local 1981

The National Writers Union - UAW Local 1981 welcomes the U.S. Copyright Office study of orphan works. Freelance writers' ownership rights have long been ignored and abused. The lawsuit New York Times v Tasini and the related class action lawsuits, as well as similar lawsuits won by freelencers in recent years, indicate that this situation has led to freelancers losing considerable income. A major contributor to this abuse and loss of income is the difficulty of keeping track of rights owners when the owners are individuals and small businesses.

The National Writers Union maintains that a registry and licensing agency (or agencies) are essential to ease of use of copyrighted works in compliance with the law. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg explained in the majority decision in New York Times v Tasini, there is a simple way for prospective users to gain access to copyrighted material: pay for it. Private licensing agencies already exist and are ready means to access copyrighted material, including when the individual rights owner may not be available for one reason or another.

Remedies such as the Canadian Copyright Board are partial and insufficient. At best, they allow others to use a work. They do not insure that rights owners get the income that such use earns. While allowing others to use a work is a critical goal of copyright law, the law must also relieve the harm done to infringed rights owners and protect them against further harm. As the summary to the present study makes clear, current means of relieving the harm have largely failed. There seems no means of relieving that harm other than a registry and licensing agency.

It would be inappropriate of a government agency, including the Copyright Office to establish either of these functions either as a monopoly or in competition with private enterprise.

While we sincerely applaud Congress and the Copyright Office for undertaking this study, we also note that the study would be unnecessary if the publishing industry had the same protections as the music and entertainment industries. In these industries, use and protection alike are facilitated by registries, licensing agencies, unions, and associations. Little such facilitation exists in the publishing industry, leading to problems such as the one presently under study. The above industries provide a ready model for the publishing industry, one that, if it were adopted, would remove the obstacles to lawful use that lay the foundation for such lawsuits as New York Times v Tasini.

Specific Questions:

1. Nature of the Problems Faced by Subsequent Creators and Users

Identification and communication with the current owner of the desired right is the key difficulty. The owner is often not the registered copyright holder, and there are often multiple owners of multiple rights to a single work. For instance, newspapers and magazines that obtain first serial rights to freelance writers' contributions will register the issue but not the individual works under the copyright holder. A potential user only knows of the publication, and the publication will not know the name or location of the owner or owners of the works' remaining rights. Even if a freelancer registers the work separately, it is highly unlikely that s/he will go to the expense of re-registering the work every time s/he changes address or makes modifications to an original work. However, s/he would maintain a current address with a registry/licensing agency that was paying her royalties for uses of the work.

2. Nature of "Orphan Works": Identification and Designation

Any passive system that allows use without actively contacting the rights owner and soliciting her agreement is not only inadequate for protecting the rights of the owner of the work; it is standing copyright law on its head, asserting a form of eminent domain for private use that has already alarmed much of the nation when applied to real estate. Such permitted use will violate the purpose and meaning of the copyright clause of the Constitution “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Article 1, Section 8.

This guarantee of exclusive ownership for a limited time was designed to encourage the growth of culture and commerce of the new nation, and it has, until recent times, worked well for the nation. Now this constitutional right is under attack by those who seek to use technology’s advances in digital reproduction and Internet communication and commerce for their own commercial gain through advertising sales and fees by employing only a “good faith effort” to find the rightsowner and secure permission to use the rightsowner’s property. Post facto compensation does not remove the legal burden under the Constitution to secure the rightsowner’s permission. Nor will such change in copyright law protect the rights owner but will allow practices that will mislead the intellectual property community and the broader citizenry into believing permission by the rightsholder exists and that traditional copyright protection under the Constitution is still honored in this land.

3. Formal Approach

A registry should be a private rather than government enterprise. A registry can only work if it is policed, and, in this case, private enterprise in the form of licensing agencies would be adequate to meet most market demands (Here we leave aside the problem of widespread copying and recopying over the Internet for commercial gain, which licensing agencies and even government agencies are challenged to address).

Likewise, elaborate systems of optional registration will not serve to facilitate use by marketers to end users, and, further, will confuse rights owners. In the National Writers Union's quarter century of experience, many freelancers and even some publishers often assume that registration with the Copyright Office is unnecessary because copyright is automatic once the work is put into tangible form. But when the complicated system of additional protections, legal deadlines, compensatory versus statutory damages, and so on, that are provided by registration are explained to them, their eyes often glaze over and they either defer or look for lawyers. The present system, in fact, is one that only a lawyer can like, with the exception that requiring registration to gain access to the full protection of the law (statutory damages) creates an onerous and unnecessary burden on the rights owner which, unless undertaken, does not attract lawyers to take up the rights owner’s plea for relief. Yet another complicated system of optional registration would compound the problems that the system already fails to remedy.

4. Nature of "Orphan Works": Age

Adjusting requirements according to the age of a work is a needless complication that further interferes with understanding and compliance. KISS should be the watchword.

5. Effect of a Work Being Designated "Orphaned"

Official designation of a copyrighted work as “orphaned” would, of course, be unnecessary in a system of registries and licensing agencies, which can better assure legal use of copyrighted work and compliance with the law. Arbitrarily declaring a copyrighted work, the property of a citizen, an “orphan” merely sets the stage for the work being effectively declared a ward of the state as a prelude to a rights grab by a third party seeking to exploit the “orphan” for commercial advantage. Let us be sure, instead, that the United States is not moving business practices back in time to when kidnapping and exploiting of “orphans” was tolerated, never mind legally condoned..