Article from LLRX.com "Can Collaboration Solve Copyright Status Questions? The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry"

Source of Image: http://media.canada.com/canwest/143/ccpyrgt.jpg (The Patry Copyright Blog at http://williampatry.blogspot.com/)
This interesting article talks about the challenges of determining whether an older book is out of copyright or not. This will determine what we can do with it in the library. Can we digitize it? We need to know its copyright status and cannot assume because it is "old" that it is out of copyright.

Roger V. Skalbeck talks about OCLC's attempt to solve this problem by introducing The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry . The article is entitled "Can Collaboration Solve Copyright Status Questions? The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry" and can be viewed at: http://www.llrx.com/features/copyrightstatus.htm

"As Roger V. Skalbeck documents, one of the underlying obstacles to reproducing older books is a central place to look for information about what is protected by copyright and what may have passed into the public domain is lacking. Responding to this need, OCLC recently introduced a beta service, the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (CER). It could be a very valuable resource for recording and sharing copyright status information."

EXCERPT:

"For anybody who wants to digitize new content, what else is available? As it turns out, there are many books that might be in the public domain, but determining the copyright status of these materials can be difficult. Items published between 1923 and 1963 may be found to be in the public domain if a specific set of criteria are examined, including such factors such as publication location, copyright renewal, and adherence to certain formalities.

OCLC estimates that there are more than 1.9 million records in WorldCat for books published in the United States between 1923 and 1963. A Copyright Office study from 1961 estimated that the copyrights had been renewed for only seven percent of the books they reviewed. This represents well over one million books that could be digitized without concern for copyright status. Tempering this number slightly, the 1996 restoration of copyright in foreign works appears to have prevented a large number of items from entering the public domain."