Attn Artists! Orphaned Works Bill

This is completely appalling... The Orphan Works Bill

Listen here or Read here

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Something seriously needs to be done about this. I'm not about to let 8 years of hardwork and practice go down the drain by some bill telling me that I don't own my own drawings. I'm spending thousands of dollars for schooling just in this field and I don't want my future career in danger because of this ridiculous bill.

This applies to any type of artist not just painters or illustrators. Authors, directors, photographers, sculptors. This needs to be fought.

What does this mean? If you're not a registered artist, then someone can sell your art? WTF? Why are they doing this bill? That makes no sense. Is this USA only?

<edit> Just listened to the interview (OMG- it was looooong) and it sounds like a totally INSANE idea. I can't even begin to describe how stupid it sounds to me. T.T There are some iddiots in this world if they can make stealing art LEGAL

EDIT:

Arkillian, the ARTISTS aren't registered, each work that is created has to be registered with the US copyright. As the law stands now, your work is copyrighted to you as soon as you create it. But this new law would require you to register your work in order for it to be protected. And some say, even then it may not be protected.

This is being blown way out of proportion.  The copyright laws as we understand them will not change.  Orphan work, is work that one can not find the artist after serious attempts were made to find them.  Most legit organizations would not  want to take a chance, even it they could not find the artist, since they don"t want to be sued.  The basic copyright laws are not changing is my understanding, and there is more reliable information on snovers journal over at ygallery.  I would not get too concerned at this point and not want anyone to panic over something like this.

I haven't read all the articles out there and I certainly don't understand the (c) laws in full, but the following are just what I think:

The new bill is probly suggested on certain valid ground (tho whether it is entirely valid is another story). I rather think it doesn't apply to us artists so much (as most of the artworks we do are highly personalized [with our own characters etc] and are not highly adaptable to other uses) as to photographers. If the publisher of an education textbook found a perfect photo on Google, but cannot locate the original photographer (as is often the case), then the process of finding the creator becomes very costly and tedious (altho, yes, the publisher should probly hands-off the photo).

I dunno, I rather think the basic rules should be revised to: 1) works whose creators cannot be located and which are not registered as free stock cannot be use for any purposes that involve the direct trasactions of purchasing-power (i.e.money). 2) the above works may also not be used in any medium with a permanant form except where printed on paper not excedding A3 in size for highly personal usages (i.e. cannot be tatooed, make into tiles, T-shirts etc, but can simply be printed for personal keepsake or used in electronics form e.g. for a powerpoint etc).

I read Snover's article and it's very informative. I suggest everyone concerned about this take a look at it:

http://yaoi.y-gallery.net/journal/snover/130570/

The bill doesn't exist. You can check for it yourself here. Do a keyword search for 'orphan':
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/110search.html

 Thanks for bringing this to my attention.  I had no idea...  

Oh god... the panic I thought would not reach here...

there is NOTHING to panic over people. It's a bunch of fear mongering hogwash. Trust me nothing is going to happen to your art. This is nothing to get all up in arms over, read ALL available information before you sign anything or jump to panicky conclusions please. Don't base your fear on one article meant to frighten you. I see bogus linked to snovers rebuttal, it is far more researched and informative and says it all in simple English.

I hate, hate... HATE inflamatory articles like this, it scares everyone needlessly.

As I kept gettin more info about it a small voice in the back of my head was saying:

I know companies like to screw people for a buck - but this kinda bill [the way it's outlined in the guys article]  would cause such a huge backlash it wouldn't even be funny! 

On Apr 14, 2008 10:00 pm, fablespinner said:

The more I think about this, the more I get angry. It is my opinion that Mark Simon is trying to push some sort of agenda. This article reached people all over the online art community. An alumni from my school sent me a link to Simon's article and one of my coworkers also heard about it. This whole thing makes me sick.

By the way, there actually was a bill that went through congress in 2006 relating to orphaned works, H.R.5439, and I think Simon referenced. He claimed it was shot down and that it was going through a revision to go before congress again. Simon's description of it is a complete distortion. And there is no revision to HR 5439.

It's pretty obvious to me that Simon knows he's manipulating the truth and he's trying to gather a following of cool aid drinkers.

This is such bull. God I'm so pissed at this.

On Apr 15, 2008 8:22 pm, BogusRed said:

Precisely, one article that was poorly researched and worded in such a way to insight mass hysteria makes me very angry. Simon should have his art shoved up his lynch mob inciting ass.

So, it's nothing to worry about then? That's good.

 Ok I hate to stir up panic but it looks like the bill does exist and is now going through congress. However, I still think the articles surrounding this are distorting what the bill is about. There is a proposal to start a database archive of copyrighted works (which to me sounds like a good idea in general) and there are proposed changes to legislation concerning orphaned works. It was introduced in the House in April.

To see the bill for yourself, click on Text of Legislation from this page.

From what I gather reading the text of the bill, its basically trying to make it easier for people to legally use orphaned works. An orphaned work is a work which was published without a name or there is no record of who created the work or the artist/copyright holder cannot be found. If you watermark your artwork with your name and/or website address you have nothing to worry about. You should be watermarking your work anyway because there are a lot of art thieves out there.

There was talk about some sort of mysterious database and if your artwork wasn't in that database, your work was not protected. The database proposal is real, but that doesn't mean your work isn't protected. See Section 514 (b) (1) (A) (i):

There's nothing in there saying you have to search the copyright database. What it does say is you need to do a "qualifying search" which is described in Sec 514 (b) (2) (A):

Again, nothing in there saying you have to search the governments database. It just means a search which I asume means though any public database such as sites on the internet.

Further down it says that the Copyright department will determine what the best practices for performing this search are. This means that this supposed bad guy who wrote this article is NOT going to be the one defining what an appropriate search for a copyright owner is. The copyright office will. So really, there is nothing wrong with this bill except that it may be a little vague in areas.

Honestly, from what I've read in this bill, it doesn't look bad at all. I think the idea of creating a publicly available database of copyright information is a fantastic idea.

Public database of copyrighted material? Okies. Dun know what that'd do, but as long as it's not the apocolypse for artwork and literature that all this hype was initially about, I don't mind. 8D

 I found this fantastic article which talks more about the orphaned works bill and how Simon is misrepresenting it for those interested.
6 Misconceptions about Orphaned Works