I swear; if I see one more post on the internets by someone in a panic over the Orphaned Works Bill, I will be very tempted to ram my fist through my monitor. Or scream bloody murder.

For the last month, I’ve seen posts on either deviantART, Livejournal, or Polanoid where the basic sentiment has been, “ZOMG! Orphaned works bill means legalized art theft! Quick! Must. Strike. Law. Down! And paying beaucoup dollars to register every single piece we have created sux0rs!”

THERE IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, PEOPLE! YOUR ARTWORK IS NOT BEING THREATENED!

For the good stuff, gotta go beyond the cut (regular blog + LJ readers).

It seems a majority of the panic has come after reading Mark Simon’s interview with Brad Holland, a member of the Illustrators Partnership, on Animated World Magazine’s website. Let’s just say it’s riddled with errors and bias.

In the Mark Simon article, he says that “orphan works” are “any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration.”

Wrong!

1) An “orphan work” is a piece whose creator/author cannot be found.

2) It is ILLEGAL to force people to register their copyrights. According to current US copyright laws, once something is created “in fixed form” — in other words, once a piece of literature or sheet music is printed, once you take a photograph with your digital or instant camera, or once you hit “Save” in Photoshop — your work is copyrighted instantly, and it is good for the rest of your life, and up to seventy years after your death. (Elsewhere, I’d said it was up to fifty years. I’d forgotten about the recent change to that, apparently. Apologies all around.) Optionally, you may register pieces with the Copyright Office for a reasonable fee. Doing so will give you some extra perks should you have to sue someone for copyright infringement.

3) If someone finds your art on your website, on your Flickr page, or on deviantART (to name a few examples), it’s not orphaned! All three websites [should] give people a way to contact the owner of a piece (e.g., an e-mail address or a contact form) to ask permission to use it for something else (particularly if none of the works are available under a Creative Commons license of some kind).

The last time an orphaned works bill was around was in 2006. It was never voted on. The bills that are on the floor now, H.R. 5889 (House) and S. 2913 (Senate), are almost the same as the original 2006 bill that went before the house, only with some tweaks.

In March of this year, Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters testified before the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. In her statement, she mentions things I have already stated, as well as some other bits in the history of US copyright laws (e.g., the States’ ascention to the Berne Convention in 1989, plus handling of works created in foreign countries). She also described her opinion on how orphan works should be handled by law. (Her statement may have some terms you may not understand completely; but she doesn’t use any legal terminology, either.)

Back to Mark Simon, and the subject of his interview, Brad Holland. Both men are members of the Illustrators Partnership (in fact, Brad Holland is a founding member). That would explain the bias, no? Could it also explain why they’re both in such a tizzy about these bills (which, at the time the AWM piece went live, did not exist)? Kynn did some investigating. Three words: follow the money.

Some more resources…

* LJ user foresthouse addresses Mark Simon’s article. She also did a project for law school regarding orphan works.

* Radio Free Meredith addresses the misconceptions about orphan works.

* Snover rips almost everything in Mark Simon’s interview a new one.

* DA staff member realitysquared addresses the issue, along with tips to make sure your work doesn’t become orphaned.

* orphanworks.net was started by an attorney who sat on the Subcommittee back in 2006. Intellectual Property law is his specialty.

* What Is Copyright? Copyright, defined in terms virtually anyone can understand.

* US Copyright Office. Almost everything else you need to know about copyrights.

So how about instead of freaking out about something that will never happen, you research the truth for yourself and get back to making some art? ;)

much ado about nothing ~ the orphan works bill by Shelly T. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.