On the Orphaned Works Act

[ellenmillion]

It's important to realize - this is NOT a bill yet. It may not be. I've seen this posted everywhere now, and I really want to haul folks back and remind them to save their energy for a real fight. These articles are reactionary and have technical inaccuracies.

If you try to track back to the actual source of the rumor, you get nothing. ALL of the information links and sources are from before the bill was defeated in 2006. Anything more recent than that is wildly reactionary and rumor, or based on that information two years old.

It's a potentially awful thing, no denying, but it's NOT happening yet!

The awful thing I see coming from this is all the people who are getting scared to put their work online, and talking about hiding everything. The irony is that that makes their work MORE likely to orphan. (Orphaned work already exists - the deal with this bill is how it is treated and where the burden of proof is, and limitations on remedy.)

If you want to take this and do some good with it, use this as a reason for cracking down on people who use work without permission and credit. A bill that doesn't exist isn't as much of a problem as the people out there who - usually through ignorance - are CREATING orphaned work.

(x-posted a few places, because I'm honestly getting OMGed out over the issue...)

ETA: Some more digging did turn up recent news on the topic:
http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2008/vsp_testimony_13Mar2008.pdf

READ it... it is hopeful and fair. Allowing non-profit and educational use of orphaned work is a GOOD thing. That is what the bill was originally for anyway, and tightening the language so that legitimate use is protected is not the Great Evil that people are making it out to be. It is also dry and technically worded, not peppered with emotional outbursts. You would WANT something like this to go through, blindly trying to stop it based on the wording of a bill of two years ago is short-sighted and foolish.

In closing: WAIT FOR THE BILL. Then decide.

ETA: Full article on the results of my research coming on May 1.

Comments

[piotrov.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll admit I was all worked up after the first article I read (which, I'm sure, was the point of the article), but after some actual research, I'm having a hard time finding any proof that the bill will be dangerous. Much of the original scary warnings I've read seem to be just conjecture...

I'm in wait-and-see mode at this point. But I'm glad I atleast know about the bill (which, unfortunately, I didn't 2 days ago), and I'll be keeping an eye on how it develops.

[theresamather.livejournal.com]

My senator Orrin Hatch was on the subcommittee on the subject. He actually took the time to write back to us, and seemed to understand the issue as he is a published musician. I don't agree with him on a lot of issues but he seemed to have a pretty good grip on this one. His co-chair on the committee was Patrick Leahy, whose son is an AP photographer (Leahy himself is an amateur photographer).
After corresponding with senator Hatch I did get the impression that our side is represented (ironically, as Hatch is one of the most conservative senators around.)

[hailerro.livejournal.com]

Okay, what's an Orphaned work? And what is it people are afraid is going to be done with them if a bill goes through?

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

An orphaned work is one which has lost its creator. For example, photographs of someone as a child in 1911 were copyrighted to... someone. But no one knows who, now. The Orphaned Works act would allow non-profits and educational organizations to use such a photograph AFTER they've made a documented, good-faith attempt to find the copyright holder and try to get legitimate permission or licensing. More specifically, it would limit how much the real copyright holder could sue them for if it WAS used.

A lot of the fear comes from the umbrella bill that the original OWA was part of - the Copyright Modernization Act. This act *suggested* that a piece must be registered. (Actually, it did not say this, and careful reading would note only that registration fulfills the need for proof, not that it's mandatory, just like it does today, but it is easy to mis-read the bill.) This act failed, but a lot of the details of it have been mixed up with the OWA and now that the OWA is back, people are bringing up misinformation about the original bill it was tagged to, also.

[cynnalia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, Ellen. Well said.