Lawrence Lessig and company are proposing something called the "Creative Commons", providing both new types of copyright licenses and a "conservancy" for placement of intellectual property still under copyright but whose owners no longer find economically useful. Something scholarly authors, libraries and publishers should perhaps look into?
See: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/02/11/creatcom.DTL Arthur
