April 20, 2007

With Database, Stanford U. Seeks to End Copyright Limbo on 'Orphan Works'

By BROCK READ

Books published before 1923 rest happily in the public domain, awaiting all manner of academic appropriation.

Books printed after 1963, meanwhile, remain under copyright, the result of a 1976 law that automatically renews the protected status of those works.

But works created during the intervening four decades live in limbo. Some are still under copyright, but others have become "orphan works" — books that have exhausted their commercial life spans and have no

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