"Rescuing" Orphan Works

FOR MORE INFO and PETITION PLEASE CLICK HERE

Thanks EVERYONE!

Below is a Press Release that I just received from Rick Gersony, President of Medmovie in Lexington, KY. This press release comes from the Medical Illustration community (Association of Medical Illustrators/AMI http://www.ami.org/ECOMAMI/timssnet/common/tnt_frontpage.cfm)

At first glance a Photographer or Photojournalist may think, “Well what does tis have to do with me?” and tend to write off the AMI as far as commonality goes, however, the AMI along with IPA are spearheading opposition to this OW Bill 2008, due to specifically the havoc that would be spread in the Medical community as well as ours.

Just think, if anyone were allowed legally to orphan, alter and make derivatives out of accurate medical illustrations….well, it will mean the “dumbing down” of the highly respected and necessary field of medical illustration….and that, besides our own individual copyrights, will effect all of our health care (or lack of it as the case may be):

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For Immediate Release

May 7, 2008

Contacts: Mark Lefkowitz, M.A., CMI Cynthia Turner, M.A., CMI AMI President-Elect (850)231-4112/(850) 585-0193 (781) 784-5293/(781) 801-5458

Richard Gersony, M.F.A, CMI            William B. Westwood, M.S., CMI
(859) 494-7654/(859)225-6400            (518) 432-5237/(518) 618-8273

Congress Moves Quickly to Weaken 1976 Copyright Law
Bill Strips Artists of Essential Copyright Protections

Legislation to limit artists’ ability to protect their work from copyright infringement is being fast-tracked through both houses of Congress, and may be brought to the floor for a vote as early as this month. Passage of a similar measure was dashed in 2006 after opposition by visual artist organizations.

H.R. 5889, The Orphan Works Act of 2008/S. 2913, The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 will allow anyone to use, alter or publish an artist’s work for any reason without permission or payment if that work is designated an ‘orphan.’ A work of art could be designated an orphan work by anybody if its creator/copyright owner could not be located . The measure before Congress makes it easier to declare works ‘orphans.’ An individual has free reign to use or alter a piece of visual art if they have performed a ‘reasonably diligent’ search and are unable to locate an artist or copyright. No parameters are offered in the bill to determine what would comprise a “reasonably diligent” search.

The Orphan Works Act severely threatens the commerce of independent medical and scientific visual artists. “This bill jeopardizes the very core of a medical illustrator’s ability to make a living. Licensing permission accounts for a substantial portion of any artist’s income,” says Marcia Hartsock, owner of the Medical Art Company in Cincinnati, OH. “Now, if someone comes along and does a perfunctory search and doesn’t find my work in these image registries, they can use it—for legitimate or illegitimate uses—without my permission and without cost to them.”

One of the most objectionable provisions in the legislation allows non-profits to be exempt from even “reasonable compensation” if they infringe an artist’s work by declaring it an “orphan”. Non-profits account for the majority clientele for many medical illustrators, and these medical research foundations are some of the wealthiest in the world. “It would especially hurt medical illustrators who would lose much of their client base – non-profit hospitals, universities and research foundations – because of the easy availability of large numbers of orphaned images,” says Bill Matthews of Lifehouse Productions in Manchester, CT.

Rick Gersony, President of Medmovie in Lexington, KY contends that, “If these medical art businesses were caused to fail, non-profit organizations would lose a valuable, highly trained group of individuals, whose innovative, educational work supports their missions.

Why would Congress remove our copyright protection, breach our licenses and hinder the growth of this emerging digital US intellectual property sector?”

Medical illustrators are highly-educated professionals and their visual art educates medical and allied health professionals, as well as the general public. Their work also supports medical research for the advancement of science by commissions from nonprofit medical research foundations. Medical illustrations appear in medical textbooks, medical ads, professional journals, videotapes and films, computer-assisted learning programs, exhibits, lecture presentations, courtrooms, general magazines and programs for TV.

Registering Artwork to Avoid Orphan Status is Cost-Prohibitive and Untested
The bill has a disproportionate impact on visual artists because it is common for an artist’s work to be published without credit lines. This is especially true of art published in the Internet Age. The most common scenario of orphaning in visual art is the unmarked image. There would be only one way to identify the artist belonging to an unmarked image and that would be to match the art against an image-recognition database where the art resides with intact authorship information. Such technology is untested and such databases do not currently exist. The Copyright Office has proposed and the legislation has enshrined the creation of visual art registries and has stated explicitly that failure of an artist to meet this bureaucratic burden would result in his work automatically becoming an “orphan” and subject to legal infringement.

The cost of digitizing and registering their artwork will far outstrip the time or financial resources of most visual artists. Their inability to financially comply with the registries will result in vast numbers of visual works being exposed to legalized infringement. “This is an irresponsible and coerced forfeiture of reproduction rights protections guaranteed to creators by the Constitution of the United States. It is going to affect the incomes and intellectual property rights of every illustrator, fine artist, graphic artist and photographer in the world,” states Bill Westwood, a medical illustrator in Albany, NY.

Non-profits, publishers and other art licensees will be less likely to commission new work from artists if they can surf the net for free images that have become separated from identifying information. Medical illustrators’ pre-existing paintings and drawings – orphaned and re-published in some transformative manner, will see infringing opportunists co-opt their self-created intellectual property.

The passage of this bill would deprive medical illustrators of their exclusive right of creative control and ownership of their work. Under this law, an illustrator would be powerless to stop the unauthorized uses of his art, even in cases where the illustrator would never want or permit those uses. Infringements sanctioned under this Act will also breach existing exclusive use contracts already in force between illustrators and their clients because many illustrators work under non-disclosure agreements and exclusive licensing arrangements. “It boggles the mind that this is under consideration. Where is the economic impact study, or even any due diligence, to determine the harm and chaos this legislation will cause in the medical field? This will severely undermine medical illustrators’ ability to meet the needs of our clients, protect their interests, and protect our works,” says Cynthia Turner of Alexander & Turner Medical Illustration Studio.

The Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) is an international organization founded in 1945. Its members can be found in all centers of biomedical research and translate the complexities of scientific thought in innovative visual ways. There are approximately 1,200 practicing medical illustrators in the U.S.

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URGENT!

THIS BILL IS THE BIGGEST THREAT TO OUR INDUSTRY-PHOTOGRAPHERS, ILLUSTRATORS, ANY VISUAL ARTISTS.
PLEASE TAKE TWO MINUTES TO SEND ( all three) EMAIL, FAX, CALL, TO 1) MEMBERS OF THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 2) AND SENATORS IN YOUR STATE.

This bill had passed in the House of Representatives last week, it is before the Senate Judiciary Committee now, then there will be a floor vote in the Senate.

Thanks again, Yungi!

We (AMI and IPA) are working on this right now as the bill is being fast tracked by Congress into law. It WILL be devastating to any creative small business owner that relies on their intellectual property to survive.

Together, we need to fight this hard and we need to it fight now!

I will have more updates, Press Releases today and soon. I’ve been emailing Press Releases all night and day long.

Please, US Photographers write your Congress people at:

TAKE ACTION!

Letter For U.S. Photojournalists to send to Congress

....and for our International Friends and Colleagues:

TAKE ACTION!

Letter for our International Friends and Colleagues

Here are some new links to OW opposition articles compliments of NUJ Photo Head and LS member, Pete Jenkins, and especially for our international friends:

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/Photographers_urge_action_over_Orphan_Works_copyright_legislation_news_255955.html

http://copyrightaction.com/node

http://www.epuk.org/Opinion/848/uncle-sams-thieves-charter

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP

Call to Action Last Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed their Orphan Works Act.
It is now headed for the full Senate.

If you’ve written before, now’s the time to write again. Urge your senator to oppose this bill.

Because it has been negotiated behind closed doors, introduced on short notice and fast-tracked for imminent passage without open hearings, ask that this bill not be passed until it can be exposed to an open, informed and transparent public debate.

We’ve drafted a special letter for this purpose.
You can deep link to it here:
Contact your Senator in opposition to S.2913 NOW: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11389061

The House Judiciary Committee is considering H.R. 5889, the companion bill now. Please write them again:
Contact your Congressman in opposition to H.R. 5889 NOW at the following link: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11389081

2 minutes is all it takes to write your senator and representatives and fight for your copyrights. Over 68,000 e-mail messages have been sent so far.

Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work

Please forward this message to every artist you know.

If you received our mail as a forwarded message, and wish to be added to our mailing list, email us at: ipa@twcny.rr.com
Place “Add Name” in the subject line, and provide your name and the email address you want used in the message area.

Stay tuned as there will be a scheduled anti-OW March on Washington.

The Orphan Works bill has passed the sub
committee hearings and may soon go before a full Senate vote.

...

Hello all:

More information coming soon on the Washington, DC, Senate and House of Representatives group(s) convening on Washington June 3-5th to lobby to oppose the Orphan Works bills.

The IPA, has asked us all to send postcards to our Senate and House district offices. Please forward this to as many people/lists/groups as you can.

Per Cynthia Turner and Brad Holland:

1. The postcard can be one of your promo cards or one you draw with the message simply saying “VOTE NO on Bill S.2913” for the Senate and “VOTE NO on H.R.5889” for the House.

2. Add your contact info to the post card:

Name
e-mail address and/or website address
Phone
Your regular address, or just city/state, plus ZIP Code

3. Mail ASAP!

They said to just keep it simple with the VOTE NO and the bill # and send to both the House and Senate.

Rather than send these to the DC offices, send them to your local and state
district offices because mail to Washington takes longer to scan and mail to
the district offices are sent by courier to DC and accepted in rather than scanned.

Go to http://capwiz.com/gag/dbq/officials and type in your zip and you
will get the contact info for your district offices for your
legislators.

The IPA wants as many of these post cards to reach the Senators and
Reps by the time they meet with them June 4th and 5th.

Additional things you can do are call your district and DC legislators
offices and voice your opinion encouraging them to vote no on the bill
and fax your letters to both the DC and district offices as well.

You can still send email letters at http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/
so far over 83,000 letters have been sent from this site.

Even if you have already sent letters and made calls please send them
again! And… Please participate in this postcard mailing and get your
voices heard on the Orphan Works Bill.

Thank you so much.

bump this to the top, damned important!

Thanks, David.

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From: illustratorspartnership@cnymail.com
Subject: The Orphan Works Act: Warning to the Public
Date: June 3, 2008 8:27:23 AM MDT (CA)
To: IPA.IV

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP

The Orphan Works Act: Warning to the Public

Should the general public care about the Orphan Works Act?
Yes, because the effects of this bill will expose any citizen’s visual images to infringement, including infringement for commercial purposes or distasteful uses.

Most people don’t understand current copyright law. But under current law, they don’t have to – the law itself protects them from not understanding it. Anything you create is considered your private property.

But under this amendment, all citizens would be required to understand that they must now take active steps – not to actually protect their work (because registries won’t protect it) – but merely to preserve their right to sue an infringer in federal court (in case they ever find out they’ve been infringed in the first place).

Otherwise, ignorance of copyright law will be be no excuse against an infringer who has done a “reasonably diligent search” for a photo he found on a blog, photo sharing site, Facebook page, or other source.

Proposal for Copyright Warning and Public Awareness Campaign
If this bill is passed, copyright will no longer be considered the exclusive right of the creator. Therefore, Congress should direct the Copyright Office to commence an awareness campaign to be conducted in all media, explaining to all copyright holders the new terms of copyright protection. Public warnings should state at least the following:

“Due to a change in US copyright law, citizens should now be aware that any creative expression they put into tangible form – from professional artwork to family photos – will be subject to infringement, including infringement for commercial uses, by anyone in the United States who is unable to locate them by what the infringer determines – and a court agrees – to be a reasonably diligent search.

“To preserve your right to sue infringers in federal court, you are advised to take active steps to assert authorship of every work you create.

“These steps will include inserting meta-data in each work, marking each work with a copyright symbol and contact information and registering each work in commercial databases where infringers can search for your work.

“Ignorance of copyright law will be be no excuse against an infringer who has done a “reasonably diligent search” according to guidelines established by Congress.”

This should be the minimum warning information and it should be issued to the public on an on-going basis to alert successive generations of the legal obligations they will have to observe as the price of creating art of any kind. We also ask Congress to direct the Copyright Office to establish and maintain local law clinics where creators and other citizens can seek clarification about their obligations under Orphan Works law.

Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work

You can urge Congress to oppose these bills by linking here to a special letter.
Tell Your Senators and Representatives to Oppose the Orphan Works Act at:
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11442621

Please forward this message to every artist you know.

If you received our mail as a forwarded message, and wish to be added to our mailing list, email us at: ipa@twcny.rr.com Place “Add Name” in the subject line, and provide your name and the email address you want used in the message area.
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