Orphan Works Act Of 2008

[Msterbeau]

Orphan works are those copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to find. The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (And the 2006 version that preceded it) was drafted to address: "Concerns have been raised that the uncertainty surrounding ownership of such works might needlessly discourage subsequent creators and users from incorporating such works in new creative efforts, or from making such works available to the public."

The Act: http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.5889:

Other info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works

http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_...earchterm=00185

While it may have been written with good intent, as currently written it has serious flaws that would potentially cause significant financial harm to artists and other creators of copyrighted works.

This letter sums up things pretty well based on my readings on the topic:

"As a constituent and a visual artist I am writing to express my grave misgivings about The Orphan Works bills before the House (H.R. 5889) and the Senate (S.2913). I strongly oppose these bills.

I would like to make it clear that I am not opposed to usage of orphan works by the cultural heritage sector for noncommercial purposes, or use by museums and libraries for preservation and education. But this legislation makes no limitations for these purposes, and will dangerously expose my art to infringements while stripping me of any practical means to protect my work. The bills have been written so broadly it will endanger the rights of anyone who creates intellectual property.Although the Senate and House bills differ slightly, the effect of either would be devastating to freelance artists and photographers, as well as to the licensing and other collateral small businesses that serve, and are dependent on, creators.

My chief objection to this legislation is that it will be a gold mine for opportunists. It will allow bad actors to infringe the work of any visual artist, even those who are alive, easily locatable to their clients and actively licensing their copyrights.

It will force anyone who creates a visual work, personal or professional, published or unpublished, to register it with money-making commercial registries. Because users will come to rely on these registries as one-stop shopping centers to conduct a “reasonably diligent search” for the rights holders, any pictures they don’t find in the registries will be low hanging fruit for theft.

Within two weeks of the issuance of the Orphan Works Report in 2006, nearly all the domain names associated with orphan works were registered by commercial interests in preparation for the profit-taking that will result if this legislation is passed. Commercial archives will be able to harvest these newly-created “orphans,” alter them slightly to make them “derivative works” and register them as their own copyrighted property. Freelancers would then be forced to compete against their own lost art – and that of their colleagues - for the new commissions they need to make a living.

These proposals would have a disproportionate impact on visual artists because paintings, drawings and photographs are often published without contact information, credit lines can be removed by others and the pictures themselves separated from the publications in which they appeared.

Moreover, the average visual artist produces infinitely more individual works than even the most prolific author or songwriter. The cost to the artist in time and money of registering and maintaining thousands or tens of thousands of registrations will inevitably result in countless managed copyrighted works falling through the cracks and into the royalty-free market. Yet the Copyright Office has stated explicitly that failure of the artist to meet this nightmarish bureaucratic burden would signal to infringers that these works had been orphaned and were subject to legal infringement.

The Orphan Works Acts go far beyond current concepts of fair use. They are not designed to deal with the special situations of non profit museums, libraries and archives. Instead they would have the effect of forcing freelance creators to risk their own bodies of work to subsidize the start-up businesses of untested search technologies and untried business models – models which would inevitably favor the aggregation of images into corporate databases over the licensing of copyrights by the lone artists who actually create the art.

This would strike a blow at the heart of art itself, and it represents a radical departure from existing business models and copyright law. It is one reason – if hardly the only one - why international copyright law, specifically Article 5 (2) of the Berne Convention, prohibits the requirement of “any formality” as a pre-condition to the enjoyment of full copyright ."

If you are an artist or creator of copyrighted works, I urge you to read on this topic and if you agree with me, that this is bad for all of us, please click on the link below and send an email to your legislators.

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/...lertid=11349111