Saturday, May 10, 2008

Orphan Works

H.R. 5889 The Orphan Works Act of 2008

S 2913 The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008

This bill is very upsetting to me and I feel that we as a people need to fight this bill. In short this bill states that any visual image (home videos, a photo of your child, a painting, a sketch) can be taken and use commercially if they have provided a reasonably diligent search in good faith for the copyright owner in a registry that does not yet even exist. That means that we would have to spend thousands of dollars personally to protect our works from being used incorrectly. Not only that but we still would not have the rights to stop them form using the image because all they have to do is pay a reasonable fee for your work determined by the user and not the copyright holder (you).

The link provided below is a list of letters that are pre-written and you put you info at the bottom and then are sent to your senator and house rep.

write a letter

1 comment:

Paul and Emily said...

Rock on Chris! Thanks for letting us know. We immediately sent in our voices to the senators.