Authors Alliance is joining Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Knowledge Ecology International, and New Media Rights in calling on the United States Trade Representative to ensure that the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (or “TPP”) doesn’t prejudice efforts to resolve the ever-worsening orphan works problem.
Orphan works—copyrighted works that can’t participate in contemporary culture because their ownership is either unknown or untraceable—have always been of special concern to Authors Alliance. Authors need access to the works of the past in order to craft their own contributions; and authors’ own intellectual legacies are diminished when their works become unavailable to others. As troubled as we are that our current system leaves millions of works to fall out of public view and use, we believe strongly that the orphan works problem is solvable, and are encouraged by the attention the United States Copyright Office has recently been giving the issue.
In order to see the orphan works problem solved, it is essential that we avoid making treaty commitments that would tie our legislators’ hands. We hope the Trade Representative agrees.