Orphan Art bill H.R. 5889 has passed the House

As many of you may know , the Orphan legislation passed the House today and it's on it's way to the House Judiciary Commitee. Please continue to write your political representatives - this bill as written would eliminate our current copyright protection and endanger our artworks , photographs and any other intellectual property we may have available. Please click on the link below to send a letter stating your objections from this site:

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

They have several different letters which have already been written for you to choose from , and would automatically be sent to the people who are representing your district wherever that may be.

Bill Widget!

A friend sent me this link today ,

http://www.opencongress.org/tools/bill_status?bill_id=110-h5889

which I thought was pretty cool , since I had no idea what had happened when it went up before Congress. I haven't even checked out the link yet , but she seems to think it didn't happen today.

If you'd like it grab it!

Lots of questions , and a little bit of good news.

A lot of confusion exists about what the Orphan Legislation actually entails and I hope this will help.

The goal of the Orphan leg. is to free up large institutions
or industries like libraries , museums , filmmakers etc. to use
images they’ve collected and can’t use because of current law. They
have millions of images/film/etc. that they can’t locate owners for
but copyright has not expired and they’d like to make them available
for educational and historical purposes. There are more applications
here but I won’t go into all of them. The examples cited are pretty
consistently old film and photo’s and if you stop there it’s all just
ducky , but there are other consequences.

The searcher would input an image , search through the registries for a match , and upon failing to find one would then supply the Copyright office with a Notice of Use. This details the search methods used and the intended use etc. and is referred to as the NOU. The CO is required to keep all records of this indefinitely. Failure to provide a NOU would remove all protection offered by limited remedy. Limited remedy means that instead of being hit with $150,000 fine or some such , the infringer is required to repay profits to the legal owner in a responsible manner and immediately desist use of the item in question.

I don’t mind the goal - I mind the fix. It doesn’t qualify the costs
to little guys in any way , and it doesn’t differentiate our stuff
from the stated interest’s of education and documentaries anywhere I
can find. I‘ve looked - maybe I missed something and if so , please
give me a heads up but I don’t think I have. For the average artist , this is too much $$ and time to spend - we have jobs , families , bills to pay and gas to buy - it just isn’t feasible. For the larger institutions it’s viable - for the little guy it’s very destructive and it turns us into a feeding ground for anyone that’s hungry.

Here’s a link to ASMP with info on the House bill (there areactually two , not just one) that delineates the essentials of the bill and changes to it since inception as well as their proposal to modify it which I actually like a lot -

http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2008/orphan_update.php

It doesn’t address all of the issue for us. But the change I like is that all uses would be required to be non-profit which would effectively make it absolutely no fun for somebody to steal my stuff. I think it would effectively narrow the field of interested parties , and that’s good.

I’ve read several very loving interviews in support of the legislation , I’ve read statements it never existed and doesn’t exist now (?) , but it does. It may not be intended to deliberately hurt us but it can , and the larger institutions just really don’t have our interests in mind here. They didn’t put this together for us to make copies of our old photos for the wedding or collage sheets, they did it to use their collections that currently they are unable to.

The law that is changed here is that now if you can’t gain permission of use by finding the owner or the item in question , you can’t use the image or what have you , period. It’s copyright protected. The change would be if the owner is not found by doing the “qualifying search”, you CAN use the image etc. after filing your NOU. Instead of assuming all work is owned , it assumes it’s not , essentially. That’s why the infringer is no longer culpable financially , unless they continue to use the work after the true owner discovers it and notifies them. If they do NOT file a NOU , they lose the right to claim limited remedy and we’re all back to square one. Litigation costs against infringements are no fun now , of course , but we didn’t have to jump through all the other hoops too. Now all we have to do is make it and go merrily on our way. It’s ours , we know it , the law knows it , the end. Pouf done. If one was going to sell a design there’d be more to it , or if
someone wanted to base their derivative art on our design and sell it then we should have done more and we have these things available - but on the whole many of us could stop there.

A note regarding that petition too , folks - or any online petition.

I meant to include this in my earlier post with the link information but lost my own trail there , I'm sorry.

You can sign that petition and stop there if you'd like , but all a petition will indicate is the degree of interest on the topic , really. That's fine as far as it goes , but who is in charge of submitting it? To whom? Will it get submitted? Your best option would be to email your political representatives directly , and I provided a link with a list of names and contact info for all of them too. Write one email , copy it and send it to everyone you can think of and state your case. My theory is if we bury them in as much bs as they'd like to bury us in - they're the ones that will fold. There's a lot more of us and we should take advantage of that. It's EASY , people - give it a go.

would you prefer to pay more $$ for copyright protection you now enjoy by law , for free?

If you don't care whether the images on your blog or photostream of your are taken and profited from - legally - unless you are very vigilant and willing to shell out a fair amount of cash , don't waste your time reading this. What if your kids blown up poster size or your artwork and idea's are now being legally used by someone else? How's that sound?

I hope you will read this. I know it's long - it took a long time to write too , believe me. And I did it because I'm angry at the mere thought of the above actually happening and there is real potential for it to manifest. This legislation is crippling - you have no idea until you read it and really start thinking about what it actually entails. The cost alone is too prohibitive to safegaurd our work - a safegaurd we enjoy now for free , by law.

Current law states that your artwork is protected from the moment of conception - registering it and adding the copyright symbol is not required to protect and proclaim your right to your own work.

This bill would 'orphan' every photo or artwork or available piece of your personal/intellectual property unless you've registered it with private companies. Yes , that is plural. This bill would require you to not only add the copyright symbol to all images which requires a donation to our government , it would require that you pay to register your work/image at not just one but all THREE registry sites , or run the risk of your image or work being orphaned. 'Orphaned' translates to 'appropriated' by private business or anyone else who wants them. One of the search engines these registry sites would be using is PicScout , which has a 99% success rate. It's the only one I've read about , but it's not the only one that will be used and this has a bearing too.

This is an excerpt from an article written by Mark Simon here: http://tiny.cc/qQjdY

"Photos on the internet could be orphaned. With tens of millions of photos shared online with services like Flickr, Shutterfly and Snapfish, there is a huge opportunity for unauthorized use of your photos... legally.

You could see photos you take of your family and kids, or of a family vacation, used in a magazine or newspaper without your permission or payment to you. You would have to pay to register your photos, all of them, in every new registry in order to protect them. Say the average person takes 300 photos per year (I take a lot more than that). If a registry only charges $5 per image, that is a whopping $1,500 to protect your photos that are protected automatically under the current laws. If there are three registries, protecting your images could cost an amazing $4,500. Not to mention the time it would take to register every photo you take. Plus, you will also have to place your copyright sign on every photo.

It gets even better. Anyone can submit images, including your images. They would then be excused from any liability for infringement (also known as THEFT) unless the legitimate rights owner (you) responds within a certain period of time to grant or deny permission to use your work.

That means you will also have to look through every image in every registry all the time to make sure someone is not stealing and registering your art. You could actually end up illegally using your own artwork if someone else registers it. DOES ANYONE SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS? "

That 'anyone can submit photos , even yours' thing - that includes you Etsy and Ebay sellers as well. If it's liftable - guess what. You're no longer automatically and legally protected. Alarming? Let's take a quick second and ask ourselves how many people are busy stockpiling our images right now , wherever they are , in hopes of some personal gain? You know these cretins exist , and this is a heaven sent oppurtunity for them. So both the jackals AND private industry stand to gain here.

Those fees are just for 300 photos and one person , and we've all seen blogs and photostreams chock full of beautiful pictures , have we not? Can you imagine the haul these people and businesses are going to make in it's entirety? My pocket is not ample - I can't afford the registration , and I sure can't afford the fees required to go to court to fight for my right to my own work.

So that's just the registration - it get's better , because even if you've paid the three sites , you've still got problems. Right now we're all protected under current international law. These people are seeking to re-write that law on an international level - it is apparently on the board in Europe as well. I don't understand all the complications there , only that they exist. My best choice will be removing every thing I have from public view , as far as I can tell. And I will. In a heartbeat I will - but if the image has already been lifted , too bad for me , huh? You too. Where and how are we going to sell our work , anyway? Can we afford to register each piece to protect it?

Let's go back to the wicked cool technology with the 99% success rate. I read an article by Brad Holland and CynthiaTurner here: http://tiny.cc/KCJ02 , explaining how this works. I wish I could just post the excerpts but in this case I can't. It would behoove you to go to the site here and read the information links: http://tiny.cc/D3rRX

Copyright law as currently written could change rather significantly , and I think you ought to concern yourselves with that.

And here is a link to contact info on government officials , so that you can write them a letter stating your feelings whatever they may be:
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

I hope you do. It's your images and work , it's your community and you should be angry they have so completely discounted our concerns , for petes sake. For photos of our family , our intellectual property , our artwork - we'd have to pay. For protection we enjoy now as a lawful right - we have to pay. That's not working for me.