I Am a Creator of Orphans

In the past I have been outraged by things our government does. Like NOT pass a Bill that would give medical insurance to millions of poor uninsured children. Or it's foreign policies, or it's unlawful taxation of our incomes. Oh, the list could go on and on. And I have emailed letters to the Congressmen about it. But when Mark told me about this the other day, I went from disbelief to outrage and finally to that feeling when you realize that your best friend stole your prom date.

Basically, there is a Bill being written right now that could very well end Mark and my art careers. This is not an exaggeration. It's called Orphan Works. It would make it very easy for anyone to take photographs or works of art from artists and use it for monetary gain, and take away the rights or ability for the artists to do anything about it. So why would any advertiser, publisher, or licensing company ever buy art directly from an illustrator, photographer, or fine artist when they could just browse the web and take any image they came across. This Bill reads as if someone was specifically making a plan to bypass paying artists for any work they use, and make it nearly impossible for the artist to take legal action. Please listen to this interview with Brad Holland, who is part of the Illustrator's Partnership. It explains it better than I can. There is information on Orphan Works there, too.

Since the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention Implementation Act in 1988, intellectual property has been protected by the government. Artists, along with authors, musicians, or anyone who created a work, were protected. Nobody could use your work without your permission, and if you registered the work with the Copyright Department, you could get monetary damages for the violation. You simply showed them that you possessed this work.

If this Orphan Works Bill passes, artists, only visual artists and photographers, are NO LONGER PROTECTED, can NO LONGER GET THEIR WORK COPYRIGHTED, will have any existing copyrighted work UN-COPYRIGHTED, and have to prove HOW and WHEN someone stole their work, using their own lawyers. It would make artists and photographers the only artists who can't. Artists can register their works for a fee with private commercial agencies(which don't exist yet), but this gives no protection either. A company will just have to look at one or two of these agencies, and if they don't see the work, can legally use it, paying a whatever fee they choose. The artists has no say. The company can always say,"Oh, I just came across this image." And legally they are protected. Artists will have to register their images with every single company if they want full protection, and still get close to nothing if an image is used. A lot of time and money for nothing. My paintings will no longer belong to me.

The Orphan Works Bill supposedly has a purpose of freeing up artwork done by artists who have passed away, thereby 'orphaning' the work. Or making it legal to use artwork of which nobody knows the origin. This is all fine and dandy, and Canada has figured out a simple way to deal with this. If someone in Canada wants to use an orphaned work, they just apply with the Canadian Orphan Works to use it, then research is done, and permission denied or accepted. Simple, huh? Well, my hunch is that some VERY wealthy special interest groups here in th U.S. saw some major money making potential for dealing visual images and decided to have the government orphan ALL artwork and photography done in America. Corbis Images and Getty Images, sellers of 'stock images', are two such groups, and they have expressed their interest to Congress, in support of this Bill. THIS is the real reason for the convoluted, over complicated, nonsense of a Bill that is wasting everyone's time. If it wasn't about these companies looking to profit, why wouldn't the U.S. just do what Canada is doing?
Obviously, everyone involved with this Orphan Works Bill has no idea about the art world and absolutely no regard for professional artists, and I am furious. To make it worse, the Bill is said to be based on the ramblings of a self absorbed Law Professor and his students and their Marxist views about authorship of intellectual property. First of all, who in their right mind bases a Bill on this crap? And if it isn't really based on it, then what kind of looney says it is? And if the theory is that all artistic creation is based on what other artists have done before them, therefore rendering it instantly communal domain, why attack just visual artists? And not musicians, poets, writers, sculptors, architects, designers, etc?
It's obvious to me that visual artists are being singled out because it is easy to take advantage of them, and there are no big corporations to fight.
I really feel like my world is dissolving around me, and I have little chance to save myself and Mark from this nonsense.

The new Orphan Works Bill is not written yet and so has no official number or title. This means that letters to Congressmen and Senators will have no effect yet. I am afraid that this is on purpose, and that the new Bill will go to a vote with no time for opposition to write or protest. Mark and I are writing to every artist and friend once letters can be written to bring attention to this violation of rights and ask for help in fighting it.

I am terrified for our future.