Semi-OT: Congress about to limit artists' copyright rights

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Sat, 5/31/08, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> On Friday 30 May 2008, Billy Crook wrote:
> > How *fair* do you think it is that you are able today,
> > to spend hundreds of hours on some work only to discover 
> > (after you've spent thousands, millions of your own 
> > money) to bring your idea to market, that there was some 
> > prior work with copyright that you had NO WAY to know 
> > about, but yet now, all your time, and all your money is 
> > in vain.
> 
> While I'm no fan of copyright law, this is FUD and can
> never happen with copyrights. Copyrights only deal with 
> copying information.  If you spent hundreds of hours 
> working on it, and didn't copy it,copyright cannot get in 
> your way.
> 
> Basically, it is impossible to copy something (violating
> copyright) if you don't know it exists.

And the "Orphan Works Act" deals only with *known* artwork.  You *know* the artwork exists.  *You know you didn't create it.*  The "Orphan Works Act" isn't desired by creators, it is desired by people who haven't created anything wanting to profit off other people's creations.

Billy Crook is clearly talking about *patents*, not copyrights, in his paragraph above.