ATTEN Artists - Orphan Works Copyright Laws - You could lose the rights to your work

The NAPPAP group became aware of the Orphan Works Copyright Changes and it is coming up for review again this year before congress. Write your Congressman and let your opinion be heard. Find your congressman here: http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml


Basically it boils down to this. If someone does a "reasonable search" and can't find a copyright attached to your work be it online or when you are having photos made, they can do whatever they want with your work. Previously published or unpublished work. Unpublished work will no longer be covered as a given.


Below is the material for reading which which I found helpful about this issue.


Basically I found that the original bill posted on the copyright site died in committee, however, this Lamar Smith of TX kept pushing and brought it back the following year
Read article below: http://www.asmp.%20org/news/%20spec2006/%20orphan_update.%20php


That wasn't the end of it then became part of Copyright Modernization Act of 2006
Here's the latest status as of April 2008:
http://www.asmp.%20org/news/%20spec2008/%20orphan_update.%20php

Another Article by a group of illustrators:
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605&page=2


Apparently: This is legislation fits the needs of Big Business like CORBIS and GETTY. It has been championed by Bush appointeees in the copyright office (the main guy just left to work for Microsoft (Bill Gates owns CORBIS).




COPYRIGHTING A Catalogue/Portfolio OF ART:

I hadn't planned on spending time on researching and updating copyrights, but I'm in a project which needed this locked down asap, so I compiled for myself a catalog of works of the project for Spring 2008 and then made a pdf document. By so doing I automatically copyright all the works and sketches background materials etc which I've been compiling over the past 6 months. I then went to the copyright online office http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#cr and I'm filing copyrights on the entire collection under one copyright notice.


You can make a catalogue for this purpose simply by loading your images into a word document, and the using your pdf file maker such as Macro Media FlashPaper2 to make your pdf document. MacroMedia is a small little program which acts just like a printer and so you print your document into a electronic media instead of onto paper. It doesn't have to be pretty it just has to have all the images in it catalogued in some way.

You can download Macro Media FlashPaper2 here:
http://%20www.adobe.%20com/products/%20flashpaper/

You can sign up to upload your pdf document here: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/beta-announce.html
and you should be able to pay online so that would give you a receipt of the date of filing.


The guidelines for doing a grouping on the copyright site are:

• The collection is made up of unpublished works by the same author and owned by the same claimant;


• or The collection is made up of multiple published works contained in the same unit of publication and owned by the same claimant (Examples: A compact disc containing 10 songs; a book of poems).
  
  Then whatever works you include in your collection would be under the current copyright laws.

Good Luck
Deborah Chapin