What is the Orphan work Act?
Basically it will be a law that allows companies to take any existing images, illustrations, photos, personal movies or even photos such as those that exist on Flickr and Picasa and use them in any add campaigns, t-shirts etc. that they want to without paying the artist any money or royalties.
What does this mean for illustrators and or writers?
It means that anything we create or have created, sketches, doodles, art on our websites, unused sketches can be taken and developed/published without credit or renumeration. As the copyright stands now, everything we do is protected the moment we put it on paper or paint it. Even with this protection, art is stolen, but at least we have recourse. If this bill is passed, all copyrights will be disallowed. So if you paid for your copyright years ago or yesterday, it will no longer be valid.
What they are planning to do is to form registries where artists will have to pay to have every sketch, painting, photo, and doodle protected. But, there could possibly be hundreds of these registries. The expense could and will most probably be prohibitive. If a company sees a painting they like, the plan now is that they are required to check five possibly ten registries. If they don't find that painting, it is an Orphan and they have done all that is required. At that point they can take the art and use it freely on anything and everything they would like. Plus, you have to consider that they could PhotoShop the signature off themselves and say they can't find the illustrator.
Basically it takes everything from artists. We will be likely to see our art on billboards and in advertising/magazines, incorporated into book covers, et al and never receive a penny for any of it. This is basically a devastating bill to the artists and I can't help but wonder if a bill about writing can be far behind? If they erase our names from paintings, they can erase a writers from their works.
What can we do to help?
Write to your Congressmen and Senators and express firmly that you oppose this Orphan Works Act. You don't have to be an artist or a writer. Pass the word to everyone you know. The more people that speak out the better chance we have of making an impact on them. Even if you've written, please write again. We're hoping to stop this now. Even if we get it turned around at some point it can still devastate artists now. Here are two links set up by the Illustrator's Partnership:
Contact your Senator in opposition to S.2913 NOWhttp://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/>
Is there any other information that you'd like to add?
I can't emphasize enough how horrible this will be to artists. The expense to register our work at dozens of different registries will be outrageous. Most artists won't be able to afford it. Even if we only had to pay $1.00 an image there are thousands of sketches, picture book illustrations and images on our websites. There is even the possibility that someone else could take our images and register them in their names, before we even have a chance to do it ourselves. We would be the ones that would have to prove they're our creations. Since they would not be protected by copyright, court costs etc. would not be retrievable. What artist do you know could afford to do this? Basically we will lose everything we've s.created and worked all our lives to build, so big businesses can get richer by stealing from us.
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