The Orphan Works Act of 2008, as written in H.R.5889 and S.2913

This is a copy of a letter I am sending to all of my congressman and Senators and I hope that I can get everyone

here to do the same. This bill will put us all out of business and allow almost unrestricted robbing of our photos.

 

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/bills/?bill=11320236&size=full

 

 

 

 

The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy

United States Senate

317 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510-2101

Re: For Photographers - Opens the Floodgates to Unauthorized Use

Dear Senator Kennedy:

 

As a constituent, a photographer and a small business owner, I am writing to express my grave concern about The

Orphan Works Act of 2008, as written in H.R.5889 and S.2913. I strongly oppose this legislation and cannot

emphasize how devastating this will be to my business and to thousands of small business owners around the

country if enacted in its current form.

 

First, I would like to make clear that I am not opposed to the use of orphan works by the cultural heritage

sector for noncommercial purposes, or by museums and libraries for preservation and education. But this

legislation, which is written so broadly, makes no limitations for these purposes, and instead, dangerously

exposes my images to infringements while stripping me of any practical means to protect my work.

 

This Orphan Works legislation allows anyone in the U.S. to use any image by any photographer or stock agency

(regardless of nationality) for any purpose (with the exception of "useful" articles - keychains, coffee cups,

etc.) without permission of the rights holder, simply by searching for, and failing to locate, the rights holder.

 

Once the infringer commences use, there is no means by which to stop that infringer from continuing to use the

image. This includes use on book covers, advertising, posters, television, billboards, any usage whatsoever, for

any purpose, even if the photograph was taken yesterday.

This Orphan Works legislation has no provision to prevent the use of works in a manner that might be

reprehensible by the owner. For example, a photograph of my child waving to his grandmother could be used on a

brochure produced by the Aryan Nation promoting the hatred of Jews and I could do nothing to stop them. Competing

photographers could use my work in their own works. The work of every photographer around the world is fair game

under the Orphan Works laws.

 

By opening the floodgates to unauthorized use of protected works, the proposed legislation will likely result in

a tidal wave of litigation and widespread violation of the rights of publicity and rights of privacy of persons

pictured in the orphan works. A photographer's right to exploit copyright in a photograph (and to grant licensed

rights to others) is effectively limited by the right of any person appearing in the photograph to control or

otherwise limit the use of his or her likeness. Photographers carefully control and limit such use so as to avoid

the violation of rights of privacy and publicity of pictured persons. However, under this legislation, that

control goes out the window. Parties making use of orphan works will serially violate the rights of publicity and

privacy of pictured persons.

 

All of us must register with registries certified by U.S. Copyright office, or risk the unencumbered use of our

images throughout the U.S. If I am fortunate enough to discover that my photograph has been infringed, I must

approach the user, prove ownership of my image, and request "reasonable compensation". The determination of what

is "reasonable" is left to the infringer to negotiate, and I lose all rights to sue for copyright infringement

even if I have registered my work with the U.S. copyright office far in advance of the usage.

 

I am entitled to the profits that the infringer has made from the use of my photograph, but only if I can prove

those profits. As there is no "discovery" provision in the legislation that would require the infringer to

provide me with any information (accounting, correspondence, copies of all usages), it will be virtually

impossible for me, or for any rights holder, to determine the extent of the usage and then calculate the profits

made by the user.

 

Under standard copyright law, it is the infringer's responsibility to prove which portions of its profits are not

attributable to the use of the work. The new orphan works legislation would flip this provision on its head,

forcing the rights holder to prove the profits of the user, or receive no profits. Proving profits is very

difficult and generally requires analysis by forensic accounting experts.

 

This legislation is the single worst development in the history of our medium and profession. I ask you to

consider the very real harm this bill can do to existing businesses. Please vote against this bill unless it is

amended to precisely define an orphan work as a copyright no longer managed by a rights holder.

 

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my concerns to you on the proposed Orphan Works legislation.

Sincerely,

Ken Winokur

 

 

 

Artists United Against the U.S. Orphan Works Acts

 

 

How the Orphan Works Bills Affects Visual Artists

 

H.R. 5889, The Orphan Works Act of 2008, was introduced on April 24, 2008 by House Judiciary Committee

Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Berman of California, full Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar

Smith of Texas, and Intellectual Property Subcommittee Ranking Member Howard Coble of North Carolina. It limits

the remedies in a civil action brought for infringement of copyright in an orphan work. It amends Chapter 5 of

title 17, United States Code, (Copyright law) by adding "§ 514. Limitation on remedies in cases involving orphan

works."

 

Section 514 is the new limitation on remedies which the Orphan Works Act will impose on any copyrighted work

wherever the infringer can successfully claim an orphan works defense, whether legitimate or adjudicated by

courts to be conclusive.

 

Overview

 

• The Orphan Works Act defines an "orphan work" as any copyrighted work whose author any infringer says he is

unable to locate with what the infringer himself decides has been a "reasonably diligent search." In a radical

departure from existing copyright law and business practice, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that Congress

grant such infringers freedom to ignore the rights of the author and use the work for any purpose, including

commercial usage. In the case of visual art, the word "author" means "artist."

 

• This proposal goes far beyond current concepts of fair use. As acknowledged by the Register of Copyrights it is

not designed to deal with the special situations of non profit museums, libraries and archives. It is written so

broadly that it will expose new works to infringement, even where the author is alive, in business, and licensing

the work.

 

• The bill would substantially limit the copyright holder's ability to recover financially or protect the work,

even if the work was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to infringement.

 

• The bill has a disproportionate impact on visual artists because it is common for an artist's work to be

published without credit lines or because credit lines can be removed by others for feckless or unscrupulous

reasons. This is especially true of art published in the Internet Age.

 

Coerced Registration

 

• The Orphan Works Act would force artists to risk their lives' work to subsidize the start-up ventures of

private, profit making registries, using untested image recognition technology and untried business models. These

models would inevitably favor the aggregation of images into corporate databases over the licensing of copyrights

by the lone artists who create the art.

 

• The most common scenario of orphaning in visual art is the unmarked image. There is only one way to identify

the artist belonging to an unmarked image. That would be to match the art against an image-recognition database

where the art resides with intact authorship information.

 

• These databases would become one-stop shopping centers for infringers to search for royalty-free art. Any

images not found in the registries could be considered orphans.

 

• There is no limit to the number of these registries nor the prices they would charge artists for the coerced

registration of their work.

 

• The artist would bear the financial burden of paying for digitizing and depositing the digitized copy with the

commercial registries.

 

• Almost all visual artists such as painters, illustrators and photographers are self employed. The number of

works created by the average visual artist far exceeds the volume of the most prolific creators of literary,

musical and cinematographic works. The cost and time-consumption to individual artists of registering tens of

thousands of visual works, at even a low fee, would be prohibitive; therefore countless working artists would

find countless existing works orphaned from the moment they create them.

 

• The Copyright Office has stated explicitly that failure of the artist to meet this nightmarish bureaucratic

burden would result in his work automatically becoming an "orphan" and subject to legal infringement.

 

International Impact

 

• Because an unmarked picture cannot be sourced or dated, works by artists outside the U.S. will be as vulnerable

to infringement in the U.S. as work by domestic artists.

 

• Presumably the Copyright Office and Congress expect non U.S. artists to register all their past and future art

with the new hypothetical U.S. databases, or see their work exposed to commercial infringement under U.S. law.

 

• It is a violation of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works for any country to

impose registration on a rights holder as as a condition of protecting his copyright. See Article 5(2) "The

enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality (emphasis added)."

 

• The U. S. is also a member country of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (The

TRIPs Agreement). Article 13 of this copyright-related treaty specifies a Three-Step Test for exceptions to an

artist's exclusive right of copyright:

 

Limitation and Exceptions to Exclusive Rights Member [countries] shall confine limitations and exceptions to

exclusive rights to:

 

(1) certain special cases

(2) which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work

(3) and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.

 

The Orphan Works Bill of 2008 violates the Berne Copyright Convention and fails the Three-Step Test of TRIPs.

 

 

How Section 514 Will Work

 

The Orphan Works Act will "solve the Orphan Works problem" by classing as an orphan any work whose author any

infringer can successfully define as one. This will result in orphan status being assigned to any work, despite

its age, even where the artist is alive, working and easily locatable by others. To repeat: even if 10 users (or

100) can find a given artist, this bill will allow a single infringer who can defend in court his failure to find

the artist, to establish that the artist's work was an orphan for legal purposes. This would include any works,

from professional paintings to vacation photos, including any pictures that reside or have ever resided on the

internet.

 

• Infringers of these works will be required to file a notice of use with a new infringement database to be

maintained by the Copyright Office. The notice will include only a text description of the visual image. The

infringer will not be required to file a copy of the image itself. The notice must also include a summary of the

search the infringer conducted, all information found during the search, the name of the artist if known, and a

description of the intended infringements. However:

 

• The infringer will not be required to reveal this search documentation unless the artist undertakes a civil

action, therefore:

 

• The artist will not be able to know that the infringement is being contemplated (and therefore cannot ask for

this documentation) until after the infringement has already occurred and in the event (perhaps unlikely) that

the artist has discovered the infringement.

 

• The infringer must provide attribution that is "reasonable" under the circumstances, and include a symbol or

other notice to identify an orphan work in a manner described by the Copyright Office.

 

• When the artist discovers an infringement and if the artist can identify the infringer, the artist is required

to file a notice of claim for infringement, including the artist's name, all known titles of the infringed work,

the artist's contact information, and proof from which a reasonable person could conclude that the artist's

ownership and infringements claims are valid.

 

• If the infringer fails to negotiate reasonable compensation in good faith, or fails to pay in a reasonably

timely manner, the infringer may lose the limitations on remedies, provided the infringer's reasonable search is

adjudicated by courts to be insufficient.

 

• The Orphan Works Act results in unrecoverable payment for use. Infringements can occur anytime anywhere in the

world. However if the artist discovers an infringement he will have to bear all expenses to discover, identify,

and pursue the infringer. This will include attorneys' fees and court costs. The artist will not have the right

to receive actual or statutory damages from the infringer. The artist can receive only what a court determines to

be "reasonable compensation." Many artists will not be able to afford the expense of recovering payments for the

unwelcome uses of their work.

 

• A high risk is placed on every infringed artist who tries to recover work from orphan status. While the artist

is always limited to "reasonable compensation" for recovery, there is no limitation on the dollar amount of

damages or attorneys' fees the infringers can obtain from the artist in a countersuit.

 

• Because the outcome of any litigation will depend on the court's interpretation of ambiguous terms such as

"reasonably diligent search," "reasonable compensation," "reasonable seller" and "reasonable buyer," etc., (as

well as the other uncertainties inherent in any legal proceeding,) a single copyrighted work could be accorded

orphan status in one legal proceeding, but not in another.

 

• The infringer can copyright a derivative work: Under current law, the right to create a derivative work is one

of an artist's exclusive rights. Section103(a) currently prohibits a user from copyrighting a derivative image

that he's infringed. By contrast, the Orphan Works Bill will permit the infringer to copyright the derivative of

the artist's work.

 

• Prohibition on injunctive relief: unrecoverable permanent orphaning in the case of derivatives. Under this

legislation the artist will be prohibited from stopping the use of the derivative work infringed from his own.

All the infringer must do is manipulate the image enough to meet the minimum threshold for defining a derivative

work. This provision invites abuse: it will allow infringers to exploit the originals of countless artists, then

use these derivatives to compete in the marketplace with the artists whose work they have manipulated. For example:

 

• Stockhouses and commercial archives could harvest newly-created "orphans," then crop or alter them slightly to

make them "derivative works" and register them as their own "creative" works. Freelancers would then be forced to

compete against their own lost art - and that of their colleagues, while willful infringers would have the

competitive advantage of merely assimilating and transforming the work of others.

 

• Unfair competition, involuntary compulsory license, and a taking. In the cases where the court denies the

artist injunctive relief for derivatives, the infringer will have to pay the artist nothing more than whatever a

court determines to be "reasonable compensation." Meanwhile, the infringer can continue the infringing work. This

means the artist will lose the exclusive right to his work, while being forced to accept a fee that is not based

on his reputation, skill and standing in the market.

 

Effect on Visual Art Market

 

• Publishers and other art licensees will be less likely to commission new work from artists if they can surf the

net for free images that have become separated from identifying information. An artist's pre-existing paintings

and drawings - orphaned through no fault of his own - would be competing against him for the new commissions he

needs to make a living.

 

• Loss of the right to exclude. An artist's exclusive right of creative control and ownership is critical to

protecting his work. Under this bill, an artist will be powerless to stop the unauthorized uses of his art, even

in cases where the artist would never, or could never, permit those uses. Besides seeing his work used in

objectionable or defamatory ways, this will void existing contracts already in force between an artist and his

clients. Example:

 

• Exclusive rights can no longer be guaranteed in the marketplace. Let's say you've contracted with a client to

give that client exclusive rights. Those rights can now be legally infringed by others through no fault of your

own, and even without your knowledge. Your right to license or sell your exclusive right of copyright to your

clients will now go out the window. This fact alone will wreak havoc on licensing markets, because

 

• It will devalue your entire inventory of work. In current commercial markets, your ability to sell exclusive

rights to a client triples the value of a license for one-time usage. Since you will never again be able to

guarantee a client that someone somewhere has not - or will not - infringe your work without your knowledge, you

can never again guarantee that client an exclusive license to use your past or future work. This means that if

this bill passes your entire inventory, as well as all your future work, will be devalued by at least 2/3 from

the moment it becomes law.

 

 

Effective Date & Retroactive Application

 

• Limitation and/or elimination of remedies takes effect on infringing uses that start on or after the effect

date of the earlier of

 

1. The date on which the Copyright Office certifies at least 2 visual art registry databases that are available

to the public, or

 

2. Jan. 1, 2013, regardless of whether the databases exist or are certified.

 

The bill has a retroactive application that extends to any works, not just those created after the effective

date. This means that all work created during the term of the 1976 Copyright Act will be in play as potential

orphans. This even includes work you've registered with the Copyright Office - it appears you'll have to register

it again, this time with one or more commercial registries. This will penalize artists who have produced work

over the last 30 years for not registering that work with commercial registries which did not exist at the time

(and which in fact haven't yet been created).

 

Calls For a Study on Small Copyright Claims Court

 

The Orphan Works Act/Sec 6 (a) says that the Copyright Office will be directed to study the feasibility of

creating alternate means of resolving disputes. However this study will only commence after the bill has been

passed. The fact that the CO concedes that it might require an entirely new branch of the Federal judiciary

system to deal with the fallout from the bill should be a red flag. But besides the issue of jurisdiction, here

are some other critical questions:

 

• There seems little justification for legislation that would drive artists' business transactions into the courts.

 

• But if Congress is determined to replace these voluntary transactions with litigation, shouldn't the means of

resolving this litigation be proved feasible before a law is passed to make it necessary?

 

• How can a Small Claims Court - or its "alternative" - determine the facts of a contentious infringement case

without the tools of discovery, deposition, cross-examination, expert witnesses, etc.? They can't, so abuses will

likely become commonplace.

 

 

This is a very good letter Ken. This legislation is going to effect everyone. I arranged for a letter from the The Illustrators' Partnership that was prepared for "our International Friends and Colleagues" to be published in a letter to the British Prime Minister on the 6th July 2008. Gordon Brown's Office for Direct Communications replied that The letter has been forwarded to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform so that they may reply directly.

 

That department has not replied yet. If you wish I could arrange for another letter to be written enclosing your post above with the request that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform respond to our concerns.

 

The letter was published here: http://www.lettertothepm.co.uk/violation_berne_copyright_convention.htm

I do not know the status of work by non-us citizens but I guess if this act becomes law, all of us will have to delete our potfolios here.

Geez. Either the Americans are too strict or too lenient with copyright law. Lord above, which is it?!

 

Maybe the solution is to make damned sure every image you put up has your copyright info in the header.

In the next three months, I will be deleting all but maybe 6 images from Photo.net because of this new law. I am launching

a site that will be password protected. It is really too bad but our country is going down the tubes and FAST!

To the above posters- this bill (not a law which has to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the President) isn't going anywhere.

 

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/orphan-works-co.html

 

Interesting that Lessig, too, was against it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/opinion/20lessig.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

"Congress could easily address the problem of orphan works in a manner that is efficient and not unfair to current or foreign copyright owners. Following the model of patent law, Congress should require a copyright owner to register a work after an initial and generous term of automatic and full protection.

 

For 14 years, a copyright owner would need to do nothing to receive the full protection of copyright law. But after 14 years, to receive full protection, the owner would have to take the minimal step of registering the work with an approved, privately managed and competitive registry, and of paying the copyright office $1."

What is this "full protection" Roger. I am a UK citizen and and far as I am concerned I am not paying for protection from the USA Government to protect my rights as an artist and photographer, as my rights, as are the rights of citizens of the USA, are protected under the Berne Convention. This bill is a violation of the Berne Convention and as such is a stain on the character of the USA. You are supposed to be the good guys!

Geoff, the text I put there is a quote from Laurence Lessig (well known digitial rights attorney), not my words. Please read the link. Full protection is for US copyright holders.

 

Here's what he says about foreign copyright holders:

 

"This rule would not apply to foreign works, because it is unfair and illegal to burden foreign rights-holders with these formalities. It would not apply, immediately at least, to work created between 1978 and today."

Thanks for posting the update Roger. This is good news that the Orphan bill has died a quiet death.

I am sorry Roger but that is what Lessig says: "Following the model of patent law, Congress should require a

copyright owner to register a work after an initial and generous term of automatic and full protection." Whilst Lessig

suggests that foreign copyright holders would not have their rights infringed how are these foreign works going to be

identified as being foreign? and after some "diligent search" the foreigner's only recourse, if his work is copied, is to

take action in the US courts.

 

Hannah, the bill has not died a quiet death, it is likely to re-emerge after the November elections. Personally I don't

have much sympathy for museums I have sympathy for those who are alive today and working to produce original

graphic work whether they are graphic designers, fine artists or photographers. Let the state help the museums pay

for what they should be paying for not the creative community. Anyone who tries to use or reproduce copyright work

should make sure they arrange to pay for that right or desist. My work is copyright by the act of my creating it.

That's the existing law under the Berne Convention and the US should not act unilaterally to change it.

Does anyone know who is pushing this bill?

 

Even if I remove every post I ever made, it would still be possible to find them using things like the "wayback" page.

 

And I'm not even sure where I have posted. I just discovered that I had a flickr page. Can't remember creating it, but there it is.

 

Even if I put a watermark on every image, what happens if "mystery man A" brushes them out, posts them on a bulletin board, then "mystery man B" uses the image off of that board? How do I prove that A is not also B? And why should be burden of proof be on me?

 

I've already stopped posting my best images. It kills me, since I love to share them, but I feel like I'm in a bind.

Edward it doesn't seem that there is an way to protect work other than by signing up for a service that can trace it

like

Digimarc. There is also Tineye which is free at present The Digimarc Professional service with tracking costs

499USD a year to

protect work and includes tracing up to 5,000 images a year. I suppose as a professional this would be ok but for

others it is unrealistic.

 

I bought a program that slices up the image into as many random rectangles as one wants and the image can't be

printed from a web by right clicking as only a small part is printed. But a dedicated jigsaw lover could do so! And

anyway, what about Print Screen.

 

Any image on the web is not going to be anywhere near as high in quality as a full size print from the original but

could still be copied. I suppose that's why so many great photos are only published on the web as small images.

when the web could be a wonderful way to view pictures. I suppose another way is allow a stockphoto service to

protect your work and provide a modest income. Or perhaps to pay a print burea to print your work with signature and

provide a receipt that would provide proof of full legal ownership. Posted from, on date by somebod, paid by

somebod. . .There is an aircraft photo service that provides aerial photos of land which does provide photos for court

cases involving boundary and other disputes. At least with getting your photos professionally printed provided you did

this before releasing them for publication I would have thought that a high level of protection could be provided.

The fly in the ointment is when Mr A grabs an image from my site, anonymously posts to a public site without a watermark, then Mr B grabs it from the public site and claims he never knew how it got there. In theory A is the culprit, but there is no way to trace him, even if he is actually B.

 

Digimarc's $499 a year for 5000 images is nothing if you are a wedding photographer. I shoot 1200 per wedding. Typical thing is to post web-sized cuts of all images that guests can then order as full prints. Well, what if Mr A snatches a web-image from my site and posts it to a public bulletin board, then Mr B (who might actually be Mr A) uses it in a web ad or worse? Now the one who has to worry about getting sued is not Mr B, but me!

 

And what if Mr A breaks the Digimarc watermark before he posts it where Mr B can find it? The anonymous nature of the web drives a hole the size of the Holland Tunnel through any such protection scheme.

Is the answer Edward to make it mandatory to include ID with any image posted on the web. Then the situation

would be that if someone posted an image on the web that had no ID they would have broken the law and the

browser could prevent it showing.

 

It is a peculier thing, the web, as although everything that can be seen can only be accessed by typing in

an "address" that address, or URL, is not enough to trace all publishers.

Ah, geoff, how do you make it mandatory when many of the anonymous image boards overseas?

 

Here's the scenario then, perfectly legal under the proposed law: Dastardly-Person grabs my image, removes the watermark, posts it to an image board in China (I had 63 of my images posted to such a board without my consent once). Then the Dastardly Person downloads the image from the Chinese board and uses it for commercial purposes in the USA. Essentially he's now laundered the image and there is NO way to prove it was he who laundered it.

 

Whoever drafted the suggested law has little understanding of how the internet works.

I don't know how Edward. But there is a major security threat to everyone from the existence of the Internet. There are simply collosal costs involved in managing spam and worse. Maybe, that is what was actually at the back of the minds of the people who drafted the suggested law.

 

That basically there is a need to ensure that images are identifiable and so we will be forced to either lose our rights or comply.

 

The root problem is that civilisation is based on property and managing that property. Stealing is not a difficult concept when it applies to someone taking your apple and eating it without your consent although it is not a hanging offence! Consent is required to share property and we can sell or license property. The trouble is that accepting that people can be selfish and possibly ignorant leads to the notion that the theft of intellectual property eg. someone's music or a photograph is not regarded as "really stealing". Apparently vast numbers of people "share" music without any sense of unease whatsoever.

 

There are vested interests in protecting intellectual property including: Microsoft and the other major software developers, manufacturers of machines for domestic and industrial and military use, the pharmaceutical industry and others.

 

It is in their interests and ours to protect intellectual property and at the heart of this protection is copyright and patent law. I think that we need to get the Big Boys involved not just to protect us from exploitation but to bring if not the Internet but its use under greater control.

Edward it seems that something is going on at a higher level. I thought that "IP" meant Internet Provider but it means Intellectual Property as well. US Congress rubberstamps IP enforcement bill. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/29/us_congress_passes_ip_piracy_bill/

My question remains. SOMEONE is pushing this bill and pushing it hard. Does anyone know who?