The Orphan Works Bill

I wanted to take a minute to address a big issue facing artists that surprisingly few people know about.

In 2006, a bill was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives called the Orphan Works Bill.  It was later withdrawn, then reintroduced in 2008, and made it on to Congress at that time.

An orphan work is a copyright work where it is difficult or impossible to contact the copyright holder.  When do you own a copyright? Under current law, as soon as you make your work.  Your copyright lasts until the day you die, plus 70 years in the U.S., sometimes longer depending on various factors.

The Orphan Works Bill calls for the creation of a database of all Pictorial, Graphic and Sculptural Works (Section 3). It also allows people to use potentially copyrighted material so long as they do a “reasonable” search for the owner.  If they cannot find the copyright owner, the work becomes public domain.

The underlying purpose here is that you will have to PAY to register your work on this mysterious database or people will be allowed to use it, claiming a reasonable search.  Under current law, you do not have to register a copyright to benefit from protection, but you can, and if you can you can seek statutory damages if your copyright is infringed.

You can see why so many artists are opposed to this bill.  For people who only produce a few or a dozen works per year, registering them might not be too costly, but imagine the cost for photographers, who might produce hundreds of pictures on a weekly basis.

So what can you do?

View the bill.

Read the proposed amendments.

Join a group in support of stopping or amending the bill.

Spread the word among your artist friends. The more people that know about this, the better.

Call you legislator and tell them why this would negatively impact you.

We cannot afford to be in the dark on this one, so I hope everyone will take a personal interest and get involved in this.