Orphaned Works Bill and other idiotry

Ametto

Deviant Art and the internet in general are all up in arms about the new version of the Orphaned Works bill. There are some artists who did the research and are trying to get people to calm down but that does not keep the stupid alarmist at bay.

If you don't know what the Orphaned Works bill is about here's a link. If you don't want to read think here's a small summary, Orphaned Works are works of art (like film, writing, paintings, etc.) that doesn't have an unidentifiable artist thus a not so clear copyright. The bill intends on making these pieces of work available to public that wouldn't be because of uncertainly of copyright. From what I understand, libraries and archivist won't touch a piece of work if it has a uncertain copyright. So with this law, this will allow people from non-profit sources access to it.

Photographers and artist, like the ones here and here and on all of the artist community sites, believe this law will allow the public to steal their works and make money because the new law will forces them to register all of their works in oder to keep copyright. And if they do register their works, it can easily be placed into the orphan category through bureaucratic mistake. Though from what I've been reading none of these weird claims are reported in the 2008 revision. Unless I'm missing something here.

If there are any details I am missing here about the Orphaned Works bill, I'd like to know.

Norvu

Yeah, I've been following this vaguely.

DeviantArt Article, here's a excerpt:

What is "Orphaned works" exactly?


The U.S. Copyright Office issued its report on Orphan Works only a couple of weeks ago. The end of that report contained proposed language for an amendment to the Copyright Act. That proposal is now being fast-tracked in Washington with a good chance of passage before the end of this Session (summer). In the opinion of MANY legislation critics, if that language is enacted in its current form, it will be the worst thing that has happened to independent photographers and other independent visual artists since Work Made for Hire contracts.

Orphan works are basically works whose copyright owners cannot be located. The term "Orphan Works" is really a dangerously misleading phrase. It makes it sound as if it includes only a few works that are not valued enough by their creators to warrant taking care of them. That may be true for owners of many kinds of copyrights. However, the reality is that for independent photographers and illustrators, the majority of your published photographs may well become Orphan Works. The reason for that is that, unlike just about every other category of copyrighted works, photographs and illustrations are typically published without any copyright notice or credit to the photographer or illustrator. The one exception to that has traditionally been editorial uses, but even there the trend seems to be away from providing credit lines. As more and more photographs are published on the Internet, credits become even rarer. Worse, even if you registered your photographs at the Copyright Office, there is no mechanism for identifying you or your photograph or for locating you through those records, if the user does not know your name.


WHY should WE be concerned?


We’re not worried about the motion picture archive that wants to preserve a deteriorating celluloid silent film or the library that wants to scan an out-of-print book to make it available for academic research. What should concern us as creators who earn income from our work are the commercial users who will produce many copies or pieces for the retail market. Everything from greeting cards, spot illustrations on packaging, textile prints, ceramic tableware, jewelry, to furniture, and so on. As the current Orphan Works Bill is written, the same provisions that would permit non-profits to use an allegedly orphan work would also open the door for commercial, for-profit use. Why would a publisher, manufacturer, or other type of client commission one of us to create a new work for them or license one of our existing works when they could use an orphaned work for free?


When are my images considered ORPHANS?


Copyrighted works would be considered orphaned if:

A. The authors, creators, or copyright holders cannot be located: they have moved, not kept their address current with the Copyright Office, are unlisted, or they have died and a user is not able to determine or locate their heirs;

B. The rights holders are publishers, corporations, motion picture studios, or other business entities that are defunct and their copyright assets were not bought out or assigned to another person or corporation at the time the business went under (these works are true orphans in that the rights holder no longer exists);

C. The authors/creators are unidentified: their names and/or contact information are not on their work for any number of reasons; therefore, users can’t locate the author because they don’t know who he/she is.

What the above means, is that works displayed on deviantART.com under an assumed name will be at risk, as the name of your account is not necessarily your name. for instance ^Obsidian-Fox I might have to register all my works as obsidian-fox AND Scott Alexander..

What is even worse, is that as of NOW, there are ZERO 'copyright offices' that will deal with the NEW registration of works falling under this bill. So no one can say for sure what measures will need to be taken and how much this will cost.

(example) I have shot 6000 images with my newest camera (soon a lot more) If any of these images are not registered, it is considered orphaned. Plus, with the government taking no perceived stance on opening any of these offices, it will be left to the Private Sector to offer us these services. And it will be costly. Even at say.. $0.10 per image, my 25,000+ lifetime images shot will cost me a whopping $2,500 to register.

That is if it is indeed that 'inexpensive'

Ametto

Thanks for the link, Norvu. I am very happy to see a non alarmist opposing view of this issue.

Sail

The bill has great intentions and frankly I don't understand the riot over it. I seriously doubt that the government is going to file all the works on DeviantArt as orphaned, that's just retarded. Besides, not everyone on DeviantArt is even in the US!

And wouldn't it be grand if Goatse were officially put into the public domain?

Norvu

This is based on what I've read and heard so far, might not be 100% correct.

As far as I understand, unlike now where you create something and you instantly own it... with this act when you create something you have no rights to it unless you pay to have it copyrighted with a company, presumably in the private sector. So anything you create with your own work and your own creativity you also have to pay for to own. Everything automatically created will become instantly orphaned until "adopted". This include past, present and future works of art.

Some professional artists go through thousands of 'works' from complete art to sketches a year, meaning if they didn't want anyone to use those works at all, they would have to register each image, or else someone gets your sketches, unprotected, and makes t-shirts out of them. Now here's the other kicker, even if you do this, register it all! If someone takes your work throws it on the internet and then leaves other people with no way of contacting you they can use it as Orphaned, because although they are required to search for you information, this search is not monitored or reviewed, it is up to the person searching to contact you to decide when they've searched enough.

One more kick? If a big company found your work online with the copyright and contact info stripped off and had no idea who's it was and then used it under this act... Unless you could find the person who removed your information and prove they had done this, you wouldn't get a lawyer to take the case, unless you planned on paying them yourself.

Sail

This is based on what I've read and heard so far, might not be 100% correct.

Well maybe you should read Ametto's link where it says that the orphaned works are only for use by non-profits and biographers.

As far as I understand, unlike now where you create something and you instantly own it... with this act when you create something you have no rights to it unless you pay to have it copyrighted with a company, presumably in the private sector.

That is completely infeasible and doesn't make any sense because patents already do this, so I must assume you are wrong unless someone can give me the hard print.

If a big company found your work online with the copyright and contact info stripped off and had no idea who's it was and then used it under this act...

Umm, excuse me, this is the way it is now. We've read the stories, and it happens all the time. This act wouldn't change anything in that regard.

Yep, all this still seems alarmist to me.

Norvu

http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html <-- was listening to this podcast, giving me the wrong info aparently =P I'm not too worried nor alarmist, since I figure this is in the spotlight now and would go through revisions if such crud were in the Bill. I was just shooting off information I had read/heard randomly before actually reading more into it.

Good note to people (and thyself), don't talk about something until you read more into it.

Ametto

Good note to people (and thyself), don't talk about something until you read more into it.

I wished more people do this too. But that's too much to hope for since I spent at least 2-3 hours reading several different sites about this and trying to separate the bad sources from the more feasible ones.

Conan-San

As I am in Britain, I will pertain to ignore this piece of American nonsense.

Rym

As the current Orphan Works Bill is written, the same provisions that would permit non-profits to use an allegedly orphan work would also open the door for commercial, for-profit use. Why would a publisher, manufacturer, or other type of client commission one of us to create a new work for them or license one of our existing works when they could use an orphaned work for free?

Regardless of the issue at hand, I have to call out this statement. This is the same crap argument that has been made about open source software, public domain works, and the Creative Commons license for as long as they've existed. To be angry that existing, free works exist and compete with recent works reeks of protectionist paranoia.

This bill may or may not be as dangerous as these people are suggesting, but to argue against it from this particular perspective is laughable.

That's like saying that GeekNights is bad, since we give it away for free and thus compete unfairly with other, pay-per-listen podcasts.

Alex

General debunking of this shitstorm.