Orphan Work Bill

    Apropos "Idiot stealing my work" - the American senate is reviewing a law called the "Orphan Work Act", which would revoke all existing copyright, meaning that all your visual work (even little sketches or stuff like that) would be unprotected and you'd be forced to pay for a copyright for each single piece of art. If you don't, your work is declared an orphan and everyone who can afford to claim copyright of your (or someone else's) work will use your work and you won't have any rights or receive any compensation whatsoever.

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    http://www.tinanicholscouryblog.com/200 ... k-act.html

    Looks like serious business guys. If this bill gets passed, the same form of "copyright" might also swap over to Europe.

    PS. I got really irritated when that guy said that Google is planning to use a lot of those orphan works after the bill gets passed - Google isn't so good after all

    I think it might be worth researching the concept of orphaned copyright works on Wikipedia, and reading something from the other side of the bias fence:

    http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200804/042408e.html

    It seems like the article you linked to overwhelmingly focuses on the potential negatives that could arise, while the reality is much less severe. An important thing to clarify is that copyright will not need to be paid for, and that people wishing to use a work must perform a diligent search in good faith to locate the author for permission. If they are shown in court to have missed obvious credit and not acted accordingly, they'll face the same infringement penalties as before.

    Bear in mind that our countries work on a court system. If someone is going to be an absolute moron by trying to claim he created your work first, you can take them to court and conclusively prove that it was your work by using as evidence the source files you presumably kept to yourself, analysing the dates the images were first used, etc. No company with an ounce of intelligence would risk a competent lawyer forcing them to pay the guy they ripped off hundreds of thousands of damages fees just for the sake of stealing a small piece of work.

    It's important to remember that the primary point of the bill is to bring orphan works out of the darkness, which is in itself a nice thing.

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