I interrupt a long-term hiatus to help raise awareness towards the new Copyright Laws that might come into effect starting next week unless we join efforts to stop it.
A friend and fellow artist, Will Terry, has joined forces with Brad Holland to help us understand what this Copyright Law is all about, here is their message:
“Orphan Works in a Nutshell:
– Congress is drafting a new US Copyright Act. If passed, it would replace current US Copyright law. There isn’t any bill yet, but the Copyright Office has issued its recommendations for one. Their Report is 234 pages long and is very complicated, so it’s risky to try reducing it to a few words. But here’s a summary of its basic features:
It would void your Constitutional right to the EXCLUSIVE CONTROL of YOUR work.
It would effectively reverse the default premise of copyright law; which means…
It would make the public’s right to use your work its defining goal; which means…
You would have to make your work available to the public.
You would have to do this by registering every picture you want to retain the rights to with for-profit registries.
Unregistered work would be considered legally “orphaned.”
Orphaned work would be available for commercial infringement by “good faith” infringers.
Good faith infringers would be anyone who believed they had made a “reasonably diligent,” but unsuccessful effort to find you.
Infringers could also ALTER your work and copyright the “derivative works” in their own names.
This would affect all visual art: drawings, paintings, sketches, photos, etc.; past, present and future; published and unpublished; domestic and foreign.
It would include family snapshots and any picture or work you ever put on the Internet.
The Copyright Office acknowledges that this would pose special “challenges” for visual artists…
But they conclude that it’s in the public interest for your work to be available for anyone to use.
The Copyright Office has also recommended the following:
Mass Digitization of the world’s intellectual property by corporate interests.
Extended Collective Licensing, a form of socialized corporate licensing that would replace voluntary agreements between artists and clients.
A Copyright Small Claims Court to handle the expected flood of orphan works lawsuits.
—> The deadline is This Thursday, July 23, 2015″ <—
– WHAT CAN WE DO? –
Write a letter —>HERE <— Let them know why this isn’t a good idea!
This Copyright Act could affect all kinds of creators!!
I call bullshit on this post.
I also suggest you PAUSE and not file a comment before you understand what’s actually going on. These guys are completely confused and are freaking out about nonsense. What the Copyright Office is proposing has NOTHING TO DO with what they’re claiming.
But the Copyright Office’s proposal DOES SUCK–in mostly completely different ways.
They’re not proposing that creators have to register everything. They’re proposing that anyone who uses, adapts, remixes, etc. an orphan work must register that use–just in case the copyright holder of the orphan work comes along and decides to claim it.
Furthermore, this isn’t even a bill. This is a report from the Copyright Office, and a request for further feedback and discussion from the communities that may be affected.
Fixing the orphan work problem needs to happen. Libraries, creators and others are being handicapped by the fact that the majority of creative and scholarly works from the 20th century are currently unusable–not in the public domain, but with no discoverable owners who can be appealed to for their use. But unless an owner steps forward (and the issue is that often there is no owner anymore), people have to act like the orphaned work belongs to somebody.
But the Copyright Office’s proposed remedies just slap a whole extra, frustrating tier of hoop-jumping on the whole deal. So file your comments and complaints, point out where the weaknesses lie, make sure your rights as creators are protected and your work doesn’t count as ‘orphaned’ just because somebody found a pirated and uncredited copy on the Internet. But know what you’re talking about.
