[quote=Mark Simon]An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission.
If you don't like to read long articles, you will miss incredibly important information that will affect the rest of your career as an artist. You should at least skip to the end to find the link for a fantastic interview with the Illustrators' Partnership about how you are about to lose ownership of your own artwork.
Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value.
What makes me so MAD about this new legislation is that it legalizes THEFT! The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies who will run the new private copyright registries.
These registries are companies that you would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work.
It is currently against international law to coerce people to register their work for copyright because there are so many inherent problems with it. But because big business can push through laws in the United States, our country is about to break with the rest of the world, again, and take your rights away.
With the tens of millions of photos and pieces of artwork created each year, the bounty for forcing everyone to pay a registration fee would be enormous. We lose our rights and our creations, and someone else makes money at our expense.
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605&page=1
Wow. Just wow. Read the whole article in the link, the tone of these businesses is beyond pompous.
I've heard about this. It reminds me why I'm not particularly proud to be an American. >:
The article seemed a bit repetitive, bordering on propaganda levels. It would have been more effective if it relied on more facts and less "OMG THERYE GUNNA GET U!!1!". That being said, this is rather absurd, for the reasons listed in the article. I'll make a point of contact my senators/congressman tomorow and letting them know that this **** dont fly.
That's just plain idiocy. I can't believe they're seriously trying this.
I just did some research on this topic for college. This is some bull.
Supporters of the Act say that it lets them access art and writings whose owners are unreachable (dead, mystery ID, etc). That much is understandable, but they completely ignore the fact that this will totally screw the rest of the country over-- y'know, the living, identifiable portion.
It's catering to the big art selling businesses, like the article says. They know people won't bother buying copyrights for everything, meaning a bunch of freebies will be up for grabs. Basically, the Act's main function is to help the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else's efforts. Awesome.
Am I to understand that those who do not make profit from images they put up on a public website or elsewhere to be snatched so easily are upset because of those with the initiative to make profit?
I don't know if this act sucks or not. :/
It's not restrictive to the web; and even if it is copyrighted, it can be claimed an orphaned work. It's basically facilitated red tape that opens up immense amounts of loop holes for corporations to profit and justify theft.
I'm all for big business, but I'm an artist too. I really, honestly, don't know my stance on that.
[quote=Fate;843004][COLOR=skyblue]I'm all for big business, but I'm an artist too. I really, honestly, don't know my stance on that.[/COLOR]
Don't you want to own the art you create without having to pay?
From what I can tell, this bill is saying is you don't own anything you create until you pay for a copywrite. How much are these copywrites going to be? Every little doodle of mine going to cost a buck so that a corporation can't claim it?
It forces artists into a decision they should never have to make: Which peice of art can I afford to call mine. How is an Artist suppose to know which peice of art will make the most money? It's making a free security we have now only viable for those with money AKA big art business.
So now corporate interests potentially have a limitless free pool of material to use; anything, anyone has ever created!