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

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Fri, 5/30/08, Billy Crook <billycrook at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Billy Crook <billycrook at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Semi-OT: Congress about to limit artists' copyright rights
> To: webgiant at yahoo.com
> Cc: kclug at kclug.org
> Date: Friday, May 30, 2008, 5:06 PM
> Hold up...
> 
> It doesn't sound unfair to me at all that you should
> have to pay some fee to register your work in order 
> to extort a fee out of someone else for using the same 
> work down the road.  The fees shouldn't be 'excessive', 
> but what does 'excessive' even mean today.

> Whatever some silly fee costs, it will only be "expensive" 
> for those (think companies) that want to register millions 
> of them to set up "intellectual property" landmines.  And 
> even if it is expensive today, wait another couple years 
> until you're riding a bicycle because you can't afford gas, 
> and then tell me what's expensive.

Just so you know, the current primary breadwinner in this family is my wife the ARTIST, and we're so far down on the income scale that I am ALREADY riding a bicycle most of the time for groceries (bike cargo trailer) and basic transportation because we have to limit gas for art needs.

Or in other words, I think I can *currently* "tell you what's expensive".  And "what's expensive" is per-item copyright fees for the artwork which is currently putting food on the table.  Let's say the current minimum wage is the per-item fee, about $5 per item.  Her portfolio is currently about 1,000 individual pieces, or about $5,000 to register all of it and prevent other people from selling it as their own.  Since some of the current income is from prints of existing copyrighted artwork, all of it has some value and provides income.  $5,000 *right now* will not happen, and credit will not happen either.

Corporations rake in billions every month.  Individual artists "rake in" 100s every month.  The law is clearly biased in favor of large corporations and against individual artists, even if we're talking a seemingly-low "registry fee" like $5 per item.  Individual artists don't have a lucrative second department selling pharmaceuticals they can use to pay for their per-item copyright fees, especially if the fees aren't life-of-the-copyright fees.

But there are privacy issues as well.  Copyright law means you get to control what happens to your private work, and unauthorized use is punishable by the courts.  What happens, under the new law, if you have taken a photo which you do not want published?  How can you register this photo with a registry without revealing the contents of the photo?  If someone steals a photo which was created by you, current copyright law forbids them from publishing the photo.  Under the "registry requirement" of the "Orphan Works" law, this photo will not be found in any registry, and thus will be considered an "orphan work" and freely publishable by anyone without fear of prosecution.

> On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:40 PM, Leo Mauler
> <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Normally I find something like this and discover that
> the complainer either is making most of the problem up in
> his or her head, or actually wants to get rid of something
> else in the bill before Congress.  However, this appears to
> be an issue of genuine concern for artists, especially poor
> artists who can't afford the "registry fees".
> >
> > http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html
> >
> > It would appear that Congress is already considering
> two bills, one in the House (H.R. 5889, "The Orphan
> Works Act of 2008") and one in the Senate (S 2913,
> "The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008")
> which would require all artists to register their artwork
> in private registries, none of which would be free to the
> artist.  The claim made by the bill is that this will help
> people wanting to use artwork to avoid a future lawsuit by
> making it easier for them to "find" the artist.
> >
> > The difficulty for artists everywhere is that if your
> artwork is not listed in any of the registries (possibly
> because you couldn't afford the fees), the person
> wanting to use your artwork can consider the artwork to be
> an "orphan work" and thus part of the public
> domain.  No matter how well-known your work is throughout
> your region, the country, or the world, if your artwork is
> not in any of the registries then it would still *legally*
> be an "orphan work".