Orphan Works and Digital Libraries via CopyrightX

Very shortly, at 7 pm ET, a presentation on Orphan Works and Digital Libraries will be live-streamed. The stream will be available at http://tfisher.org/hls1x-copyright.html.

For later viewing, the presentation and discussion will be archived in about a week at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/CopyrightX_Events_2013.htm.

The speakers are top-notch: Brewster Kahle, John Palfrey, and Robert Darnton. It seems likely their discussion will be set in the context of the Digital Public Library of America, which launched last week, and with which all are connected. Copyright themes likely will focus on US law.

More information on the DPLA is available on its page at the Berkman Center. From what I gather, it’s an app platform, with the API publicly available here for those who know how to do things with one: http://dp.la/info/developers

A highly readable writeup is available from the Knight Foundation, one of the DPLA’s supporters: http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2013/4/18/now-live-first-digital-public-library-of-america

As a backgroud note, since January I’ve been taking an experimental MOOC-like course on copyright from Harvard professor Terry Fisher through a Harvard/edX collaboration. This talk is part of one of the extra features of the course, a series of webcast guest lectures by interesting presenters. The guests present a talk to Prof. Fisher’s in-person copyright class at Harvard Law, and those of us in the edX version can login, watch along and discuss, or simply watch later. The guest presentation webcasts are open to the wider public via the livestream and archive links noted above.