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Orphan
Works and Fedmarksm Solutions
In January 2006, the U.S. Copyright Office issued
their report on the study of the issues raised by “orphan
works” which are copyrighted works “where the owner of a
copyrighted work cannot be identified and located by someone
who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires permission of
the copyright owner.” The
report further states that, even where the user has made a reasonably
diligent effort to find the owner, if the
owner is not found, the user faces the possibility that a copyright owner
could bring an infringement action after that use has begun.
Balancing the rights of content consumers with the
rights of content owners is an important issue. Content consumers deserve
to have access to digital content while content owners and artists deserve
to be recognized and compensated for their work. At the same time
the rapid proliferation of technology has made this balancing of these
needs increasingly difficult.
As a result, the US Copyright Office has recommended changes
to existing copyright law that in effect would provide some limitations of
damages rewards to the content owner if the inadvertent infringer, prior to the commencement of
the infringement, performed a good faith, reasonably diligent search to locate the owner of the infringed
copyright. Infoflows believes that the Fedmark Services
provides to content users a tool for making a reasonably diligent search to
locate the owner.
How the Fedmarksm Solutions Facilitates Orphan Works Digital
Objects
The Fedmarksm Solutions delivers to both
content owners and users a solution that enables content users the ability to identify if a digital
object is copyrighted and further the ability to identify a potential source
for licensing.
Key features of
the Fedmarksm Solutions include:
- For the
content owner and distributor - Consistently track and identify
digital content on the worldwide internet. This capability allows for
the tracking of thousands of digital objects
- For the content user -
Ability to identify if a digital object has been Fedmark’ed as
well as the ability to clear rights
with participating distributors.
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