Orphan Works comment 0676

Established 1884 Incorporated by Congress 1889 400 A Street, S.E., Washington, DC 20003-3889 Phone: (202) 544-8307 March 25, 2005 Mr. Jule L. Sigall Associate Register for Policy & International Affairs U.S. Copyright Office James Madison Memorial Building, Room-401 101 Independence Ave., SE Washington, DC 20540 Orphan Works Notice of Inquiry – 70 Federal Register 3739 (Jan. 26, 2005) Dear Mr. Sigall: On behalf of the American Historical Association (AHA), I thank the Copyright Office for inviting comments on the orphan works issue, which is a matter of deep and abiding concern to us. The AHA was incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts, and the dissemination of historical research. It is in those capacities, and on behalf of the 14,000 members and 3,000 institutions we represent, that we urge you to address this issue. In our roles as an organization working on behalf historians as authors, and as a corporate entity that has authored works in the past, we have found that ambiguities in fair use and recent expansions in copyright law have created a severe impediment to the development and exchange of scholarship about the twentieth century. As a corporate entity, the AHA has encountered difficulties in these areas, as the copyright for reports written by our committees in the middle part of the century were ceded to publishing companies ...