Copyright and orphan works

Increasing copyright lengths, automatic copyright coverage, and abolition of renewal requirements have led to the growth of a problem called "orphan works." These are works which may be under copyright, but whose owner is impossible to identify or locate. It's possible that I've violated copyright on orphan works myself; my filk tape of a decade ago, Shrink Wrap Blues, included my musical settings of a couple of pieces by Berton Braley, who wrote large numbers of poems for periodicals and is largely forgotten today. Linda Tania Abrams, who edited a Braley compilation called Virtues in Verse, assured me there were no copyright issues, but it's possible that she was wrong. No lawyer has ever complained to me, perhaps just because its hundred-copy run never got noticed; and as far as I know, no one ever went after Linda. But if we had been wrong and a lawyer pursued it, we could have been up for serious legal damages.

If a work may be under copyright, but you can't find the copyright holder to get any permissions, it may disappear because the existing copies are disintegrating and no one can copy them. Sometimes libraries have gone to considerable expense to restore old publications that were printed on cheap paper, because there's no one to authorize making new copies. The American Library Association has a page on the orphan works issue, with many useful links. On a more personal level, people may want to scan and publish old photographs on the Web, only to realize that they're copyrighted by a professional photographer who went out of business in 1980. When a copyright holder dies as a person or business entity, the copyright passes into someone else's hands, perhaps someone who doesn't know or case.

Because of these problems, there have been efforts to change copyright law to allow a good-faith defense for the publication of works where the copyright holder just couldn't be found. In such cases, ideally, the republisher would be liable only for a standard scale of fees, not for punitive damages, and the matter would usually be handled out of court.

To be fair to all concerned, it's necessary to make sure the good-faith effort really was an adequate one; otherwise unscrupulous publishers could reissue copyrighted works and just pay royalties when they were caught. The problem is particularly serious with photographs, which by their nature rarely come with identifying information. Modern digital images may have metadata identifying their source, but even there it's easy to lose metadata when converting images from one format to another. Copyrighted works don't have to be registered, so there's no convenient single place to look. (And even if there were, the technology doesn't exist to find a matching image efficiently from a very large collection of images.)

A recent article on the Cato site by Timothy Lee discusses these issues and some proposed legislation to address them. There's quite a bit of misinformation circulating (see, for instance, this blog post) about these bills -- claims that anyone using a work can just claim to have made a "reasonable search," and that if a court accepts that claim, the copyright holder can do nothing. In fact, the bills set specific requirements for searches, and copyright holders can still collect "reasonable compensation," just not punitive damages.

The rumor that the bills somehow "threaten open source" is nonsense. If you didn't put your name on the open source code which you wrote and no one can find you, you're up the creek even under existing law.

SWAT team called on household spill

Thanks to Universal Hub and Deb Geisler, we can follow the story of a "hazardous materials" crisis when someone spilled cleaning supplies not far from Boston's state house. Allow me to play a minor-league Radley Balko and summarize the story:

July 2: The police were "called on a strange odor at 21 Temple St." This was handled as a "second-level hazardous materials response." A blogger reports that "Fox 25 reported that police had surrounded a 'meth lab.'" The occupant of the apartment was identified as a former MIT chemist, leading Deputy Fire Chief Robert Calobrisi to say, "Any time you have someone who knows what they're doing with chemicals, it can be a bad situation." Mad scientist on the loose!

The story soon began to unravel:

Several apartments directly behind the State House were evacuated last night after a resident barricaded herself in and poured ammonia or some type of chemical over the floors of her apartment.
 
A police SWAT team arrived early this morning and entered the building. The team eventually broke into the woman's apartment with full hazmat gear and forced her from the residence.

Ammonia is indeed "some type of chemical." It can even be dangerous under the wrong circumstances. But is a SWAT team necessary to deal with it? Boston Police Superintendent Rafael Ruiz said, "We don't want to take chances, that's why we took the proper procedures." Surely he should be aware that sending in a SWAT team is taking chances, that introducing a significant armed presence and breaking into a home is a risky action.

The latest account:

"It turned out to be household items such as shampoo, floor wax, and dish detergent," said Steve MacDonald, spokesman for the Boston Fire Department. "She was squirting, spraying these items on herself and on the floor and furniture in the apartment and mixing it all up."
 
Several bottles and boxes of Tide laundry detergent, along with one bottle of Mop & Glo, were scattered throughout the apartment, alongside disheveled furniture and on top of broken glass.

On the positive side, the police and firefighters who were on the scene apparently acted with suitable restraint. It wasn't their decision to treat a cleaning spill as a crisis. It's the officials who decided that a chemist who'd gone slightly nuts constituted a crisis who deserve the criticism, along with whoever the reporter was who dreamed a "meth lab" up. I predicted that the woman would be charged with using a "hoax device," as was done twice before in invented Boston crises; fortunately, I was wrong.

Independence Day, independent minds

As I was coming home today, I was thinking about what to write for a July 4 post. It grew impressively, "There was darkness over the land" dark during the train ride home, foreshadowing the downpour that followed and echoing my feelings about the way the country is going. We're seeing that the opposition of the left to excessive presidential power was nothing but a political game, and they're abandoning it with ludicrous haste now that they smell a Democratic presidency coming. In an utterly disgusting editorial, the Washington Post has adopted the Bush line almost verbatim. (See commentary on the Cato website.)

Trusting in elected politicians can lead only to betrayal and disgust. The replacement of Bush with McCain or Obama won't improve anything. Mass media can't be trusted very far, though there are reporters who have done and will continue to do excellent things. I'm sure some of them are as disgusted with the Post's betrayal as I am.

The only repository of human worth is the independent individual. There are people who aren't going to change their colors to win an election or gain popularity, and they're the ones who deserve our respect and support. Full agreement is less important than reliability on the issues on which they're right. They're the ones who stand by their reasons more than their conclusions, who put principles above parties, who want understanding rather than belief.

Such people have always been scarce, but they're the ones who make a difference when times are dark. So for Independence Day, take a moment to honor some of the people who have shown their independence of thought and stood by the principles of liberty. They're the kind of people who made us free in the first place.

Obama's "conversation with God"

"So one Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon called "The Audacity of Hope." And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. ... Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering his truth."

Those are the words of Barack Obama, taken from his own web site. I find this scary. It's one thing for a candidate to believe in a deity and declare allegiance to a particular system of belief. It's another to declare that he's "too weak" to act for himself, he felt God was communicating to him, and he has submitted himself to supernatural powers. Elsewhere on the page he says "I think I have an ongoing conversation with God." This may be metaphorical language, but it sounds disturbingly like hallucinations of a direct divine connection. If he has to deal with a national crisis, will he allow an imaginary divine voice to influence his decision?

The page repudiates malicious rumors that Obama is a Muslim. It's appropriate to do this. But then he goes on to declare his Christian credentials at great length. In doing so he accepts the premise implicit in the smear: that only a practicing, devout Christian is a suitable presidential candidate. An appropriate response would have been to state his religious affiliation, give some supporting evidence, and then say that it shouldn't matter anyway. Instead he makes his religion a campaign point.

Here's one section, quoting just the main head and the three subheads:

OBAMA IS A PRACTICING CHRISTIAN
 
Obama Was Baptized And Attends Church Once a Week When He is Able.
 
Obama Reads The Bible, Finds Time to Pray On Campaign Trail.
 
Obama Held His Personal Bible When He Was Sworn-In As A U.S. Senator.

Obama gives the impression that religion will be a major influence in the way he holds office. He mentions the Rev. Jeremiah Wright approvingly three times, once referring to him as a "close confidant." I thought he'd repudiated Wright?

Elsewhere, Obama has declared that "leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups" and said that he'll maintain but reform Bush's faith-based initiatives.

None of this is to say that John "Christian Nation" McCain is better. But as far as I know, McCain hasn't claimed to be in direct communication with God.

The herd and the pack

Although today's political left and right are equally hostile to freedom, they're bitter enemies of one another. In part, this is a matter of two gangs fighting over the same territory, but there are differences in thinking which make each group genuinely believe in its own worthiness and the other's depravity. To understand this, it's helpful to look at two cultural archetypes of collectivist organization: the herd and the pack.

Herd animals travel together in relative peace, instinctively migrating to the grounds that will satisfy their needs. They have no powerful leaders; the top animals may have prestige, but not much decision-making power. It survives enemies by avoiding them, or when necessary by standing up to them with sheer numbers. Packs, on the other hand, are predatory groups. They have strong leaders who prove their worth in battle. They defeat enemies through superior strength, or they fail when they are too weak.

This isn't necessarily zoological reality; it's the archetypes which count, since they're really a reflection on people as much as animals. They apply to many forms of social organization before the present day: the herd is found in the loyal subjects of the wise king, while the pack is the conquering empire.

Each image has its well-known negative side, which each group sees in the other. The right sees the passive, undifferentiated herd animal in the left, while the left sees the cruel predator on the right. Both are correct.

These two outlooks lead to different views of individual choice, both hostile. In a herd, individual initiative is just nonsensical. A cow doesn't strike out on its own. If it strays from the pack, it's because it's confused or sick. In a pack, individuals may challenge the pack leader, but their challenges must be settled quickly, with the challenger either losing and accepting the leader's power or being cast out, or with the challenger becoming the new leader.

To the political left, personal choice lacks reality. The claim to being "pro-choice" is an accident of the history of slogans, and those who use it seldom even think of extending it beyond the one issue to which it sticks. People need to be led, guided, directed, like sheep. We should be treated kindly, but mustn't be permitted to stray.

To the right, choice is real but dangerous. It's the source of Original Sin. Moral decisions must be constrained by commandments rather than principles. Obedience is a prime virtue.

This picture doesn't explain everything, and it's easy to point out anomalies. Various historical influences have gone into both sides; the left holds some respect for freedoms in the personal sphere and the right in the economic sphere, though both of these characteristics are waning dangerously. But these archetypes provide a good amount of insight into the thinking of the respective camps.