1 post tagged “orphan works act”

The US are proposing an Act called the Orphan Works Act of 2008 which will take away the automatic copyright protection that photographers and artists currently have.

In the US, if you take a picture, or make a piece of art, you automatically own the copyright and before someone uses it for their own purpose, they have to obtain/purchase rights from you.

In essence, the new law makes it so that to retain copyright, you have to have the image registered in a database and, if it isn't found in the database, the person who wants to use it can then freely copy the image.

So billions of photographs must be registered in order for everyone to retain copyright. That is so unlikely to happen, all of the photographers will lose their copyright protection.

If you want to register your objection to this, please go to this site for specific details. If you live in the US, there is a form on the site that allows you to email your senator automatically. If you don't live in the US, the site provides contact details for key US representatives that you can fax.