And Then They Came For The Creative Class
May 14th, 2008 at 7:37 pm by Susie
Go, send a letter, sign the petitions (via Live Bait Sandwiches):
• The Orphan Works Act defines an “orphan work” as any copyrighted work whose author any infringer says he is unable to locate with what the infringer himself decides has been a “reasonably diligent search.” In a radical departure from existing copyright law and business practice, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that Congress grant such infringers freedom to ignore the rights of the author and use the work for any purpose, including commercial usage. In the case of visual art, the word “author” means “artist.”
• This proposal goes far beyond current concepts of fair use. As acknowledged by the Register of Copyrights it is not designed to deal with the special situations of non profit museums, libraries and archives. It is written so broadly that it will expose new works to infringement, even where the author is alive, in business, and licensing the work.
• The bill would substantially limit the copyright holder’s ability to recover financially or protect the work, even if the work was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to infringement.
• The bill has a disproportionate impact on visual artists because it is common for an artist’s work to be published without credit lines or because credit lines can be removed by others for feckless or unscrupulous reasons. This is especially true of art published in the Internet Age.
Jesus, I guess we can expect crap like this daily for the next 200+ days. The corporate masters dictate razing fairness and equality to the ground.
Well, not really. This is pretty much how copyright law has worked. What makes the change bad is a would-be licensor’s self-determination about what constitutes a reasonably diligent search.
Even given that, a plaintiff could probably bring a case before a court and probably win if they were able to demonstrate that the defendant’s search was flimsy or nonexistent, and that would be especially easy if the defendant has an established record as a repeat offender.
Visual works are really difficult to protect. Even if google created something like “google copyright” where you could upload your image and determine if people are using unlicensed versions, all a copyright thief would have to do would be to crop the image, alter the colors, flip it negative, or whatever. If you don’t want your art posted on the internet, don’t put it up there. That’s the only way.
The most pervasive form of infringement on the internet seems to be the posting of music, performances, and movie snippets. These simply aren’t licensed. But a lot of the megacorporations seem to tolerate it because it may, conceivably, have the effect of driving up sales. They could change their minds of course. And the megacorporations are the most likely to holler if this rule proposal were to take effect.