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Spectator
How You May Lose All the Rights to Every Piece of Art You Have Ever Created!
Brad HollandOn April 5th, 2008, I interviewed Brad Holland of the Illustrator's Partnership about the Orphan Works bill and how it affects every artist and photographer in the world.
YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS because you are about to lose your copyright protection. Every one of you needs to stand up and be heard in order to protect what we have all created.
Please forward this information to every creative person and group you know. I give permission for this audio file to be copied and transferred and replayed so that everyone may learn about what is going on.
go to the link below to listen to the interview
http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html
please sign the petition thank you! At the link below.
http://www.petitiononline.com/dAvsOW/petition.html
And/or send a E-mail to our Senator At
http://billnelson.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm
to make this even easier for you just copy and paste whats below
Re: Orphan Works Copyright Legislation
Dear (Senator or Representative) ____________________:
(Fill in first sentence) __________________________________________________ __. The amendment to the Copyright Act proposed by the U.S. Copyright Office is a disaster in the making for independent photographers and other independent creators of visual works. We are different from all other copyright owners because, unlike other creators, it is the exception rather than the rule that our images are published with any kind of credit line, copyright notice or other form of attribution. Credits are unusual in print publications, and are virtually non-existent on the Internet. Without names attached to them, most published images are likely to become Orphan Works.
The proposal for dealing with Orphan Works is based on an erroneous assumption on the part of the Copyright Office: See footnote 378 on page 115 of Copyright Office report, ".... The likelihood of statutory damages or attorneys' fees being awarded in an orphan works case is probably low, given that for those remedies to be available, the work must have been registered prior to infringement, see 17 U.S.C. section 412, and if a work is registered it is unlikely that the copyright owner is unlocatable through a diligent search." This simply is not true for published works of visual images. Without credit lines or other attribution, there is no way to know a photographer's name in most cases. Without a name, there is no way to search the Copyright Office records for a photograph.
As written, the proposal might work for copyright owners of other types of works, but for independent creators of visual images, it will end up converting massive numbers of images, and probably the majority of published images, to Orphan Work status.
Making the situation even worse, with recovery for infringements of Orphan Works limited to reasonable compensation with no possibility of receiving attorneys' fees, independent photographers and illustrators are left with no practical way of receiving compensation from a user who refuses to pay. It would simply cost more to sue than the possible compensation at issue.
I implore you to fix the proposed Orphan Works legislation so that it will not deprive photographers of protection under the Copyright Act. At a minimum, I ask you to include either a provision to allow recovery of attorney's fees or to create some form of small claims court to award compensation, especially where a user of an apparent Orphan Work refuses to pay after receiving a demand from the copyright owner. If you do not, this legislation may well put me out of business.
Thank you for your time, attention and, I hope, support.
Respectfully yours,
(your name)
Brad HollandOn April 5th, 2008, I interviewed Brad Holland of the Illustrator's Partnership about the Orphan Works bill and how it affects every artist and photographer in the world.
YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS because you are about to lose your copyright protection. Every one of you needs to stand up and be heard in order to protect what we have all created.
Please forward this information to every creative person and group you know. I give permission for this audio file to be copied and transferred and replayed so that everyone may learn about what is going on.
go to the link below to listen to the interview
http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html
please sign the petition thank you! At the link below.
http://www.petitiononline.com/dAvsOW/petition.html
And/or send a E-mail to our Senator At
http://billnelson.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm
to make this even easier for you just copy and paste whats below
Re: Orphan Works Copyright Legislation
Dear (Senator or Representative) ____________________:
(Fill in first sentence) __________________________________________________ __. The amendment to the Copyright Act proposed by the U.S. Copyright Office is a disaster in the making for independent photographers and other independent creators of visual works. We are different from all other copyright owners because, unlike other creators, it is the exception rather than the rule that our images are published with any kind of credit line, copyright notice or other form of attribution. Credits are unusual in print publications, and are virtually non-existent on the Internet. Without names attached to them, most published images are likely to become Orphan Works.
The proposal for dealing with Orphan Works is based on an erroneous assumption on the part of the Copyright Office: See footnote 378 on page 115 of Copyright Office report, ".... The likelihood of statutory damages or attorneys' fees being awarded in an orphan works case is probably low, given that for those remedies to be available, the work must have been registered prior to infringement, see 17 U.S.C. section 412, and if a work is registered it is unlikely that the copyright owner is unlocatable through a diligent search." This simply is not true for published works of visual images. Without credit lines or other attribution, there is no way to know a photographer's name in most cases. Without a name, there is no way to search the Copyright Office records for a photograph.
As written, the proposal might work for copyright owners of other types of works, but for independent creators of visual images, it will end up converting massive numbers of images, and probably the majority of published images, to Orphan Work status.
Making the situation even worse, with recovery for infringements of Orphan Works limited to reasonable compensation with no possibility of receiving attorneys' fees, independent photographers and illustrators are left with no practical way of receiving compensation from a user who refuses to pay. It would simply cost more to sue than the possible compensation at issue.
I implore you to fix the proposed Orphan Works legislation so that it will not deprive photographers of protection under the Copyright Act. At a minimum, I ask you to include either a provision to allow recovery of attorney's fees or to create some form of small claims court to award compensation, especially where a user of an apparent Orphan Work refuses to pay after receiving a demand from the copyright owner. If you do not, this legislation may well put me out of business.
Thank you for your time, attention and, I hope, support.
Respectfully yours,
(your name)
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