Proposed US Legislation Could Orphan Copyrights

[swimmernsecretsea]

From illustratorspartnership.org:

by Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner
From Illustrators’ Partnership

Proposed US Legislation Could Orphan Copyrights
February 20, 2006

The US Orphan Works Report: On January 23 the U.S. Copyright Office issued their Orphan Works Report, outlining a proposed amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act. It defines an “orphan work” as any work where the author is unidentifiable or unlocatable, and applies to both published and unpublished works, US and foreign, regardless of age. The legislation would be retroactive. http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report-full.pdf

The proposal would not re-impose formalities, but would penalize artists who didn’t re-impose formalities on themselves. The strategy is to “limit remedies” for infringement in any case where an illustration or photograph was published without “relevant information” on the picture itself - or where relevant information has been removed:

“For authors and copyright owners, marking copies of their works with identifying information is likely the most significant step they can take to avoid the work falling into the orphan works category. This is particularly true for works of visual art, like photographs and illustrations, that otherwise do not contain text or other information that a user can rely on to help determine the identity of the copyright owner. Nothing in the Office’s recommendation would make such markings mandatory...Nevertheless, the presence and quality of the information on particular copies will be a highly relevant fact as to whether a reasonable search will find the copyright owner.” (p. 9, emphasis added)

As posted in a yahoo Graphic Designers group I subscribe to:


Please email your representative and congressmen/ women. You can quickly find out who they are and send them an email from: http://www.usa. gov/Contact/ Elected.shtml

Link: http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00178

[icymist]

1. This thing would make it legal for corporations to steal our work!

Here's a scenario: Back in the 80's I wrote several songs and copyrighted them. A corporation wants to use my song but is too lazy to look for me since I have moved and changed my name. Under this legislation all they need do is claim that they 'reasonably' searched for me, couldn't find me, and has 'orphaned' my work. It is noe illegal for me, the author, to use my own work!

To relate the above to art, just change 'wrote several songs' to 'painted several pieces'.

THIS SUCKS!