Major Infringement

Erin Shaw

The Orphan Works Act is scheduled to be introduced in the House and Senate simultaneously for a vote this month. If passed, it would require that all art be digitized and registered with private commercial registries, effectively ending passive copyright protection. The current copyright law protects art even if it is unregistered, but the new law makes “any work not registered with a private sector registry ...a potential orphan from the moment it's created.” This means that all art is up for grabs in the public domain unless “the legitimate rights owner (you) responds within a certain period of time to grant or deny permission to use your work.”

Anyone can register a work, which means that artists could end up illegally using their own work if someone else claims it in the private registry. Not only visual art is susceptible to infringement and plagiarism: family photos, home movies, journal entries, sketches, letters and e-mails are considered public domain unless you pay to have them in the publicly registry. This creates the paradox that “In order to 'protect' work from exposure to infringement, creators would have to expose it on a publicly searchable registry.” To make matters worse, the registries cannot enforce copyright infringement or monitor when your work is used; it is up to you to search regularly and pursue plagiarizers on your own.

In the words of the Illustrators Partnership, “Coerced registration violates the spirit and letter of international copyright law and copyright-related treaties. And because this bill would effectively eliminate the passive copyright protection afforded personal correspondence, family photos, etc., it would tear one more slender thread of privacy protection from the fabric of fundamental rights we currently take for granted.”

You can learn more and download the House and Senate versions of the Orphan Works Bill at the Illustrator's Partnership website. Get involved by signing this petition or contacting your representatives.

Creative Commons image: "License to Steal: U.S. Orphan Works Act" by Spadea on Flickr