Thursday, May 8, 2008
From the Illustrators’ Partnership of America
The Orphan Works Act of 2008 will endanger the rights of anyone who creates intellectual property.
It will expose your art to commercial infringement. It will include work from professional paintings to family snapshots. It will include published and unpublished work. It will include any image that resides or has ever resided on the internet. It will force you to register every picture you do with privately-held commercial registries. It will make all unregistered works potential orphans.
This radical change to U.S. copyright law will shift the burden of diligence from infringers to rights holders. It is wrong to give infringers the right to make money from your property without your knowledge or consent. You should not have to pay businessmen to keep the work you’ve created.
The Orphan Works Act is an assault on national and international copyright laws. It’s an assault on the property and privacy rights embodied in them.
The gist of this legislation is that any work not registered with a commercial registry (for a fee) would be a potential orphan from the moment of creation. If you don't register a work, any entity could simply remove your copyright notice, use the work without your permission, and then claim it was orphaned. Assuming you have the resources to sue, this legislation gives the thieves a plausible excuse and leaves you the artist with no legal protection.
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