I agree that this specific provision doesn't as directly affect people
uploading to Wikimedia Commons. But I worry that the US Copyright Office
will only be hearing from people who do searches in an industry
context--people who have access through their companies to all sorts of
databases and the money to hire researches for searching, and assume that
any reasonable search would involve that sort of time and expense and
specialized knowledge, rather than what a reasonably diligent, good-faith
person working on their own time could do.
I figured that they could stand to hear from the experiences of people who
do other sorts of searching and noncommercial uses, so they can get a sense
of what sorts of barriers noncommercial users face.
The standards that they use here could easily be adopted for other uses
later--"reasonable search" was a big sticking point in broader orphan works
legislation proposals in the past, for instance.
So it's not about direct effects on Wikimedia Commons so much as laying
groundwork for them to understand the breadth and capabilities of
volunteer, noncommercial uses.
Best regards,
Sherwin
From: R. Acconish via Commons-l <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Commons-l Digest, Vol 160, Issue 6
To: <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello,
There is an obvious need to improve the coverage of such audio files at
Commons. But I fail to understand how this process could help us. Assuming
a search of US audio files qualifies as suffcient, the upload would
nevertheless be valid only for non commercial uses, which is not accepted
at Commons. Or did I miss something ?
Regards,
Racconish
--
Sherwin Siy
Senior Public Policy Manager
Wikimedia Foundation