New Media Rights and KEI tell the US Trade Representative not to adopt measures that could expand the “20th­ century digital black hole"

Today New Media Rights joined the Authors Alliance, Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Knowledge Ecology International in calling for the US Trade Representative not to agree to measures in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP) that could greatly reduced our ability to make orphaned works more accessible to the public.

The current language proposed in the TTP would make it much harder for the US to to reduce the damages that could be awarded against certain good faith users of orphan works. With proposed copyright terms extending to life +100 years, this reduction is absolutely critical. As authors pass away and companies close, finding the owner of some copyrighted works has become an impossibility. By lowering damages and taking other measures to allow for the reuse of orphan works, we give Americans the tools they need to help works from falling into the “20th­ century digital black hole,” and being lost to us forever.

The complete letter can be found below.