Stop the U.S. Orphan Works Act
January 14th, 2009 by MattA bill called the “Orphan Works Act” is pending in Congress. If approved, the bill would adversely affect U.S. copyright law, and cause major problems for individuals.
Currently, in the United States, a creative work such as a blog post, web design, podcast, video, or photo is protected by Copyright as soon as you create it, and until 100 years after you die. If you are unsure of the workings of U.S. Copyright, see this primer for further information.
If the Orphan Works Act is passed, all of your copyright holdings will be retroactively “orphaned” and lose their associated protections. You will have to register each of them with the federal Copyright Office in order to regain said protection. In addition, any future work of yours will have to be registered as well. This registration will cost a fee, and will likely be too expensive for most individuals to pay.
So essentially every bit of creative work you have ever done, or will do, would pretty much open for anybody to use however they wish. It would be okay for scrapers to take your blog content. Disney could take that song you wrote and use it in a movie without paying you.
It’s not good. This act takes the ability to protect your creative work away, while allowing the large media companies to plunder your works at will.
If you publish anything on the internet, you will be affected by this. Can you afford to pay $50 (assuming the registration fee is that cheap) for every post on your blog, for the design of your blog, for every single creative work that you release to the public?
Even if you don’t live in the United States, this will affect you. It will hurt the internet as a whole. Maybe you have web-friends in the U.S. who are designers, bloggers, novelists, or whatever. Do your part and raise awareness of this issue.
You can email your local politicians with the form letters here.
Source: Corporate Theft: The Orphan Works Art Bill Re-introduced
It is very hard to find comprehensive information on this sort of thing, so correct me if I’m wrong on anything.
Of course I'm not interested in making it difficult or expensive to secure your creative work, but its important to note why this act is trying to be pushed through Congress. The name of the act says it all. Because copy written material is protected for so long, much content has to discarded and cannot be used in things like documentary movies and other informative narratives and media. The reason: people cannot locate the copyright owner after a full scale search.
The important thing to focus on is the "diligent search" aspect. It's not as if they will just straight up copy and paste all of your work and call it their own after this Act is passed. People will still be required to find the copyright owner by exhausting all means necessary in locating them. A good "other side of the story" write up can be found here:
http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/
Reading that article, I can see why they would want this act passed, I'm just not sure they need to be this intrusive. The least amount of infringement is better in my opinion. And if they can't come up with a bullet proof process of monitoring someone's ability to locate a copyright owner then I'm not sure the Act has merit.
I'm much more in favor of limiting the duration of copyright instead, perhaps to 25-30 years with the option to renew., as Steven suggests below.
The "diligent search" aspect only applies to work which have a copy write. The bill would wipe out all current copywrite. The front stance of opening up archival works for documentary purposes is a good one but it's not enough to endanger the lively hood or artist.
Either way for the moment it doesn't matter considering this bill has been tabled since a new Congressional session has started.
Thanks for posting this Matt, its always interesting to see how the little guy gets continually screwed by Disney etc… as an author, photographer, designer I personally would never have the money to register even a token few items. The scarey part of that bill is, as an Australian, it will undoubtedly make it's way into our laws here too if it makes it into US law.
And who determines who can't be found? Why not just pull the life plus 70 years copyright law back to about 30 years and then we'll have a public domain… it's almost like they're saying hey we're losing our public domain due to life plus 70 years so we'll just take that away from most poor people.
Disney is another maddening story. How many public domain songs / tunes did Disney use at the time? Yet they aren't willing to let go a shilling and every time Mickey Mouse comes close to public domain we get extended laws. Anyway, big subject and huge in our industry especially. Thanks for sharing.
I like your thinking, Steven. The only reason this is really necessary is because of the ridiculously long period that copyright protection lasts these days.
I imagine Mark Twain is turning in his grave. His thinking was that copyright law should protect a work's creator so he or she could have a steady income from it, and the creators' children for a time…but grandchildren should have to work for their own money. I doubt he would like the way things have turned out, what with corporations like Disney keeping the rights to a work for so long.
Copyright law needs some major reform, not something that will end up, whether intentionally not, hurting the little guy.
I just found your blog following a link, it’s nice, but I hope you can update it more often, hehe, because the information that you have here is quite interesting. Keep going!
I already have enough trouble keeping up with my current schedule (1 post/day).
Have you been following the Shepard Fairey case? What do you think of this?
http://www.myartspace.com/blog.....-lost-la...
We are all doomed if that is considered fair use! Sucks that it is the AP but it could have been another artist just as easy.This is exactly why the orphan works bill would not work. Shepard Fairey could use your image and throw you pennies if it were passed!
I hadn't heard of that… Thanks for mentioning it.
6 misconceptions about the Orphan Work Act
http://maradydd.livejournal.co.....ml?threa...
I support the Orphan Works legislation. Think about it folks. Do you realize, you cannot (for example) put your kindergarten class photo on Facebook without violating current copyright law? You cannot put a photo of your grandparents who just arrived on Ellis Island in your genealogy project? Because some dead photographer who doesn't care, or even remember, took the photos?
"You cannot put a photo of your grandparents who just arrived on Ellis Island in your genealogy project? Because some dead photographer who doesn't care, or even remember, took the photos?"
Actually, you probably can. If the photo was taken before 1930-something-or-other it's public domain. Back then the copyright term was much shorter.
We don't need the Orphan Works Act, we need reform of draconian copyright law. We need better fair use laws, shorter copyright terms, etc. Mark Twain had some good views on the subject. (You should benefit from your work, and your children, but your grandchildren should have to do something for themselves.) That kindergarten class photo? Copyright law should allow you to use it for noncommercial uses.
What if someone sees an illustration on my portfolio site and innocently copies it for their vacation blog. They shouldn't do it, but we all know this happens. They stop updating the blog, time goes by and they change their email. Someone looking for a picture for their project comes across my image and can't find contact information for anyone connected to the blog? They send a few emails, maybe look up a name, no luck. According to this law they can now take my image and do anything they want. I don’t think someone should be able to do that after a feeble attempt to find the owner. What if they put it on a product and make money, worse than that, what if they take the image and use it in connection something I don't agree with?
Sure maybe the copyright laws are too long, but then the famous painters grandkids that can still make some money licensing the Grandfathers paintings might disagree.
This is just another example of how creativity is not valued.
Perhaps we can do something to stop the Orphan works bill through the courts. Hopefully so but money and lobbying are very powerful and a lot of large companies have a strong vested interest in the version being proposed.
There is a need for a version of the orphan works bill and Google among others are big supporters of the proposal. However everyone agrees they are going too far in their demands.
They aren't listening to the creators objections and the extent of the bill being proposed plus Googles recent grabbing of things that are not theirs (tied down), makes me think that we might be partly to blame again. By using their search engine we are giving them power.
So for the hell of it, if you are using Firefox as a browser, you can delete Google as a search engine (which will be noticed). It's like voting.
Bing is owned by Microsoft who are also pushing the bill through. There are a list of search engines that you can install listed here:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/t... N5?_t=tracking_disc ]
It's possible to delete both Google and Bing from your search engine selection which would definitely get google etc, to sit up and pay attention.
Goodsearch is a nice alternative
http://www.goodsearch.com/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/96...
This is a passively dynamic way of sending a message. It doesn't cost anything, the search engines are easy to install and a change is as good as a rest. I've been using Good search for a week and it's fine.
Cheers
Tom
Feel free to pass this on.
No thank you. I won't cripple myself by using a lesser tool, just to attempt to send a message to an otherwise good company that's only supporting a bill. Even a million people ceasing to use Google (which is quite a feat, when "Google" is synonymous with "search") would not be a dent enough for anyone to care.
I don't care if someone can't find the right to an Orphaned work.
MAKE SOME NEW STUFF, STOP LEACHING OFF THE PAST!
PAY SOMEONE TO MAKE SOMETHING NEW!
I am a new Illustrator. I don't have ANY money to spend on copyright.
I need free protection! This law would force me from posting my artwork online for public view!
This is going to destroy the release of new information that can be viewed but not sold by the public!
I'm so angry… I'm writing the government officials.