On September 20, stakeholders in the European publishing and library sectors released a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to facilitate broader access to books and related materials that are no longer in commercial distribution. The MoU, suggests Olav Stokkmo, president of IFFRO (the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations) also addresses the availability of orphan works: “The MoU will solve the problem of orphan works,” Stokkmo told IP Watch, “because it will allow such content to be included in collective licenses.”
But despite this optimism, collective licensing cannot adequately moderate access to orphan works, because collective licensing frameworks too easily corral orphan books into the same pen as works that have known and locatable rightsholders, therefore unduly restricting orphan access. In other words, because collective license agreements include works without determinable rightsholders, they incorporate books for which some types of uses should not be governed by licenses at all. Read more...
