Thursday, May 29, 2008

The Fight Against the Devastating Consequences to the Orphan Works Act Continues

Greetings!

The Grass Roots Effort to stop the Orphan Works bills is going full steam ahead as many are beginning to truly understand the devastating effect these bills would have on the visual arts.  

Please check out http://www.owoh.org for the latest information, schedule of information, and the like.  

Your emails, calls and postcards ARE making a difference.  Please keep them up and don't forget to education yourself on the bills as well.  Be prepared to say why you oppose this and how it will affect your business.  Don't just take our word for it...

Keep fighting the good fight!
Tammy 

1 comment:

Lloyd Shugart said...

Tammy,

I read your letter on a Techdirt http://techdirt.com/articles/20080425/124144950.shtml#comments posting, and I must say that of all of my readings on this issue. Your letter is on point of the real effects of this legislation, as it relates to creators, especially the visual artist.

I am the POSTER CHILD for why this is bad for the copyright creators.

I come from an experience that is real. I am in year 3 of a copyright litigation that, my legal bill now exceeds $500,000.00 USD. US copyright laws currently lack “MORAL RIGHTS”…. before any “ORPAN WORKS LAW” should be considered the copyright laws need to address at least “Mandatory Attribution” bc I don’t think that moral rights can be enforced by law.

My case involves thousands of images that were marked with my “CMI” embedded into each and every image, with metadata….client removed said data, and then licensed my images to hundreds of third parties who then licensed my images to thousands of additional third parties under their “Affiliate Marketing Programs”

So if you are an artist and are concerned with your artwork then you better be concerned with this proposed legislation, and the impacts it will have on your ability to sustain yourself.

As an aside, although I was the copyright owner, I was the defendant in this lawsuit. I was forced to incur $500,000.00 USD in legal fees to protect my copyrights. As a result I now have thousands of images being used by thousands of people whom are all using my images to make money….they have not paid one red cent for these assets…I can not pursue each and every one of them….and those that I do can claim as a defense that the work is either in public domain or an orphaned work, or that it was an innocent infringement.

How many readers have the kind of USD it take to protect your copyrights, even under the laws as they now stand? If the orphan works law passes as now proposed it will cost more to protect your rights both in real dollars and in your personal time, and emotions.

Propet USA v. Lloyd Shugart WD WA. Federal Court

Lloyd Shugart

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