Edit 2/18/2009
This stamp/deviatation was created as a means of bookmarking and keeping tabs on the Orphaned works act, so this post will remain this way.

For those that are wanting my stance on the tracing/copying/redraw/eyeballing thing that's got DA in a bit of an uproar, you can find my dry oppinion on it on my journal's forums by following this [link]


Edit 1/1/2008
A friend of mine called me up just before the year turned over concerned about a number things - including the Orphaned Works bill, in which she informed me that her sources showed that it had passed.

Naturally this scared me so I decided to research what's new with this... and found nothing really.

According to the site that monitors the status of the bills (there are two, one for each house), nothing's changed since I initially posted this stamp to DA.

House of Representatives Bill (H.R.5889): [link]
Sentate Bill (S.2913): [link]

Now, what I think might have rekindled the disdain of this whole thing is a post to the IPA blog [link] , which was made recently, but is citing information from earlier this year.

In a nutshell it looks like it still hasn't passed. You can all breath again for a little while.


Original-ish Post

Since my original post of these stamps last night I have opened the flood gates to this controversy... which is totally what I was hoping that I would do. I want people to talk about this, because I feel that you guys - more than anyone - should be aware of what is going on with your copyright laws. You should always stay on top of this. IT is relevant to your interests.


From what I read of the article posting on the copyright library. This is what I could gather from the "Orphaned Works" bill that is being proposed:


This is a bill designed to allow fort he use of "orphaned works", which are works that actually do not have copyright owners because they either died, relinquished the rights anddisappeared , or made something public and did not provide contact information with them. We all run into situations where we may need to use these images, but cannot find the copyright owners for them (examples such as parents wedding photos and works-for-hire have been brought up). This bill proposes a solution for really weird instances like this, but there is a lot of controversy because of the details of all of this.

Overall I guess that it stems from what perspective that you look at this from. If you're the person trying to find the copyright holder, then you'll sympathize with the bill. If you're the artist that's worried about having your works used without permission, then you'll disagree with it.

I will readily admit that I am that latter as after I've had my copyrights previously infringed upon, I've lost a significant chunk of faith in the business practices of people. Let's save those stories for later though, and take a look at the sides of this fence.

The "I need the rights to this" side.

As a graphic designer that has worked on a wide-range of really weird projects I can respect the sheer amount of work and frustration involved with trying to find a copyright holder and being unsuccessful. There have been a numerous times where I've had to scrap ideas (especially when I was in journalism) because I was unable to find who I was supposed to get permission from in order to use articles and images for my projects.

The frustration factor for this went up because when I worked with the school newspaper, we had a morgue just full of great things that we could possibly have used, but had NO idea where they came from. I am lucky that I was able to illustrate my way out of a few holes, but being able to use those political cartoons and photographs that were located in there would have made life much easier.

In the first articles and pod-casts that I stumbled upon, there was an idea for registries in which works would be listed with so that people seeking to used orphaned works could search and find out if there was a copyright holder for the particular pieces. In later articles that I went through (thank you all for the links guys!) I read that this idea was shot down.

Remembering my frustration in journalism in trying to search the previous class records and asking my fellow students, It would be nice to have a place where we can search a database to see if there is anything there, but the realist in me wonders how the hell this would have worked in the first place.


The "My Work, My Rights" side.

I can understand the need to register works with the government. It makes it easy to avoid situations like the stuff mentioned above. I've registered my comics with the government and because of such I know that if I get picked up by a publisher that they couldn't just snatch the works out from under me. It's a nice feeling.

From what I could gather from the articles and pod-casts though is that in order to prove that our works aren't orphaned though, we would have to register pretty much everything because sources like Google (whom I love to death) makes it way to easy to detach our works from out online publications.

Watermarking is the immediate solution to this. I can't argue with that as everything should indeed be watermarked when it's published into something. I mean, even newspapers go that little extra step to credit those that contribute to the paper. All around it's a god idea.

But remember when I said that I had my work infringed upon before? Even with the easy access to my contact information on my comics, I started finding my characters on t-shirts being sold at conventions. I didn't give permission for that and it really upset me. It took a cease and desist order to stop that and thankfully for me, that's all the legal action that I needed to take there.

I've always took a sense of comfort in that even if the gentleman had indeed decided to let the claim escalate to a court lever, that I would be very safe in my copyright to my works. However, the new Orphaned works bill leads me to worry a bit.

My concern is for those that feel that all they have to do is take the watermark off of an image in order to use it. With the Orphaned Works bill, wouldn't they be able to claim that they did a reasonable search to find the copyright owner of the image and thus be protected in their use of it?

Lets just say that I am being paranoid, but wouldn't this mean then that in order to completely avoid this kind of issue that I should indeed then register all of my works with the government? I mean... it is the reasonable place to search for the copyright owners for things.

If this were a free option then I would be all over this like white on rice (yes I love that term too), but so far I've had to pay about $40 for each piece that I've registered with the government already. If I had to do that for every piece that I've churned out ever, then I wouldn't be able to afford being and artist.

I don't want to say that this automatically places our artwork in the "public domain" by being online again, as it's obviously not meant for that, but it does make it easier for those with the ability to research a little bit to use our images without our permission. How do we protect ourselves from them if this somehow goes through?

Please. Discuss.

Links on the topic.

1.) [link] (US Copyright Office Article - 133 pages of really hard to read stuff)
2.) [link] (US Copyright Office Article - that is much easier to read)
2.) [link] (Pod-Cast that struck terror into the best of us)
3.) [link] (an organization bringing public awareness to this bill)
4.) [link] (Well informed Blogger)
5.) [link] (other deviants and their concerns)
6.) [link] (Another guy that struck terror into us)