Orphan Works Act

[wedding-photography-denver]

[Moderator's note: The thread was originally titled "Bye bye copyrights..."]

 

 

Say goodbye to copyrights...

 

 

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2008/09/orphan01.html

 

and:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqBZd0cP5Yc

 

and if you do care...

 

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11980321

[kbtphotography]

Is this JUST in the U.S.?

 

I'm Canadian...so yes -- curious if it applies or if it's, unfortunately for ALL American artists, a U.S. legislation?

 

We've got lot's of room up here ;)

[Matt Laur]

The proposed legislation doesn't change what a copyright is, or who owns it, or whether or not someone infringing on

that copyright can be hit up for the money the should have paid to use the material in question. No copyrights are

going away, if this passes.

 

The issue at hand is whether or not someone who comes across a piece of work that cannot be tracked back to its

creator can be in a position to put it to work. Which, for photographers, is a good argument for using a few keystokes

to edit EXIF and IPTC data, and to use watermarks.

 

The same guy who is infringing on your work - right now - by decorating his blog with one of your images, is still

going to be doing it tomorrow, and next week, too. He's infringing now, and he's still going to be infringing if this bill

passes. You can hold him financially responsible for the mis-use today, and you'll be able to if this bill passes, too.

But what about the biographer who wants to include a 50-year-old family snapshot of his subject in a book? A

snapshot with absolutely no means available to ever track down the person who took it, or that person's heirs/estate?

That's an orphaned work, and that's what this is about.

 

Oh, and needless to say, if that biographer does publish that image, and in the unlikely event that the copyright

holder for it turns up, the biographer is on the hook to make customary compensation for the use of that image.

[mike dixon]

Perhaps we should say goodbye to basic reading comprehension. The title of this thread is grossly misleading. Copyrights are not being eliminated.

 

If you disagree with the proposals in the Orphan Works Act, you should try to make a coherent argument about how those proposals are not in the best interests of photographers. Implying that copyrights are being abolished is dishonest sensationalism.

[phule]

[[The title of this thread is grossly misleading. ]]

 

That is putting it far too kindly. The title is a pile of steaming FUD. The thread should be deleted entirely and the OP allowed to submit something resembling reality.

[mike dixon]

Title of the thread has been changed in order to reduce BS.

[geoffs1]

Just in case anybody actually wants to read the bill: http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.5889:

[wedding-photography-denver]

My bad, just hoping to get people to notice.

 

Sorry for the offense. Censure accepted.

[geoffs1]

<p>Gotta love how P.net know more about URLs than the URLs do (the trailing ":" is significant in the link

above).<br /><i>Moderators please feel free to delete my post above</i></p>

<p><a href="http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.5889:">The Library of Congress page on H.R. 5889, the

"Orphan Works Act of 2008"</a>.</p>