Orphan Works comment 0687

Orphan Works Comments of The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) In response to Copyright Office Notice of Inquiry 70 Fed. Reg. 3739 (January 26, 2005) March 25, 2005 The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) welcomes this opportunity to respond to the Copyright Office’s Notice of Inquiry (NOI) on Orphan 1Works, 70 Fed. Reg. 3739 (January 26, 2005). We commend the Office for undertaking an inquiry into this area, and look forward to working with the Office as this inquiry continues. In this inquiry, the goal should be to develop a system that will facilitate the use and public dissemination of copyrighted materials whose owners cannot be located (or in many cases even identified) despite a reasonable level of due diligence. At the same time, any new system should not serve as a substitute for diligent clearance efforts, and so must contain safeguards for the legitimate interests of copyright owners. RIAA believes that, with careful design and the input of representatives of both users and copyright owners, it should be possible to develop and implement such a system. 1. Nature of the Problems Faced Whenever the connection between copyright owner and copyrighted work cannot be made, users are deprived of the opportunity to license the work and creators are deprived of the opportunity to reap the benefits of such licensing. Accordingly, the music industry generally works hard to ...