Orphan Works bill - please read

The Orphan Works bill is being pushed through congress at this very moment with little to no opposition! Write to your congressman/woman and let them know it is WRONG!

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=Columns&column=MindBiz&article_no=3605

Please check out this article for more information and links.

In short – the role of copyright registration will be given to private industry in the US. Copyright will no longer be assumed. You will have to register all you new work and everything you’ve ever done or risk having your work ‘orphaned’ thereby giving ANYONE else the LEGAL ability to steal your work and profit from it. You could run the risk of breaking the law simply using your own art!

This is not an exaggeration or conspiracy theory BS! Please read the article above and act immediately! Various forces including the soon-to-be private copyright registration offices are trying to get this passed in congress by summer so few people will actually even know about it let alone do anything to stop it!

Please, act now.
Good luck to all of us,
take care,
scott

there may be more panic here than necessary… (but what do i know?)
i’ve been trying to learn as much as possible since i’ve become aware of the orphan works bill. there are some well thought out counter arguments here http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html (myths concerning the orphin works bill)
and i’ve read the proposals (not that the bill couldn’t be changed to benefit someone even more) here at the copyright site http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat031308.html

the scariest thing to me seems to be the “reasonable search” in finding the copyright holder and the “best practices” ideas in conducting that search. they could be wide open to interpretation.

Don’t forget that this is an international forum. Your post is pretty much completely irrelevant to possibly most people reading it.

When you’re posting a message to an international forum, it’s a good idea (and polite) to mention what country you’re talking about – at the beginning of the post.

I had no idea what “congress” you were talking about – until i got down to the third paragraph and then there’s a passing mention of the US. I suppose that’s what congress you’re talking about, i dunno. And i don’t even know what “congress” means in that context. Is it a parliament or something? [Shrug…]

essentially a parliament, but without the Lords – everyone is elected and accountable :) But someone said in another post that it somehow affects the UK as well, the cousins are in it together on this one i think. I’ll see if i can find that post for you-

Here you go -

Thanks Amy.

I had a read of that and all i can say is “strewth!” Surely there’s no real chance of such a deranged law getting passed?

put nothing past our Congress. These are the folks that passed the Patriot law. And way too many other abominations to catalogue here. And too depressing to as well.

International Implications: The US Copyright Office clearly expects this “solution” to serve as model for the rest of the world. If other countries are foolish enough to follow suit remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, what the bill means is this: big businesses want to make money from the creations of individual artists, without spending too much money tracking them down to pay them. Unlike anyone who creates tangible goods, our rights to our creations are supposedly “not absolute”. What if we told carpenters – “Society needs tables. You build tables. We’re taking yours.”?

That opinion aside, my expectation of the interests of individual creators winning over the deep pockets of big business is not great. Sigh. Scrapers get rich, real content creators struggle. If anyone steals my work, I will haunt them! :D