As if dealing with my school district's misuse of photography wasn't enough, now there are bills in the House and Senate to strip photographer's rights to photos published on the internet.
Yes. Totally true. Yes. Totally wrong.
Bills H.R. 5889 The Orphan Works Act of 2008 and S 2913 The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 aim to make any photography published on the internet to become "orphaned work" and immediately sectioned as public domain and to be used in any way any person or company wishes to do so.
These bills have been shot down before, under different names.
Shoot them down again.
Send a letter to your state representatives (it's an easy form to fill out!) and make yourself be heard.
If this passes, any photos of our children or our work will be public domain and may be used for advertising by anyone across the globe.
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8 comments:
stuff like this just infuriates me. I am fuming from my nose and ear.
It's funny how they're so willing to strip ownership from these images, but at the same time they let some industries go crazy protecting their copyrights. I'm sure it has nothing to do with money.
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but I don't see anywhere in those bills that says that photographers rights would be stripped to photos published on the internet, or that any photography published on the internet would become orphaned work. If I haven't read a part that says that specifically, please let me know.
I don't much like the bill, but from what I understand, it's specifying that a copyright infringer needs to perform a diligent search for the copyright holder of a work before using it. That opens up lots of loopholes, obviously, and would probably make it more difficult to collect damages for infringement when it happens, because so and so can say that they diligently tried to contact the owner of the copyright. But the owner of the work still holds the copyright unless the ownership of that work is sold.
yeah, i didn't outright read that either, but once i started doing research on it the way it can be interpretted is that it's orphaned work.
which really gets me, that it's not outrightly saying it. but because it opens the *possibility* of people taking it and using it is why i thought it needed to be brought up.
What if you copyright your photos?
Jeez, since what happened to my photos recently involved the police dept AND the FBI, I will be filling this form out.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Ok, no offence but where does the USA get off on owning the net?
Is there something I don't know? Xxx
Thanks for the heads up.
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