The states are looking to pass a bill that states you no longer have rights over your work. I wish this statement was some horrible dramatic exaggeration, but this is exactly what is happening. So what does this mean exactly? Anyone who feels like it can take your work and do whatever they please with it, legally, without your permission. As soon as you create something, it will no longer be yours.



"An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission." - Mark Simon

Alright, so, how shit works now is if you make something, it is automatically protected. This is fairly common knowledge (as well as common sense), what the Orphan Works bill does, is takes your protection away. As soon as you create an image, it is, by default, an "Orphaned" image until you go out of your way to put your time and money into registering it (yes, it will cost you money to register your own work). If you do not register your work, you give up all rights you have under the current system, which means anyone may use your artwork for whatever they please. They may take the likeness of your characters and turn them into crappy fast-food mascots, they may take that funny shot you have of your older sister in her bathrobe and use it in an ad to promote their pornography.

Here's an even bigger kick in the balls: Registering your work still doesn't protect it completely.

"The Orphan Works Legislation is written in a way that anything you make is orphaned from the moment of creation. This applies to finished works, sketches, literature, music, animation, film...even family photos. Any and every creation made in the past, present or future. And in order to receive the minuscule amount of protection the bill does give, we will be forced to pay for registration in private registries for every single work created. For professionals or even hobbyists that share a lot , this would mean paying for thousands of works for registration in multiple registries. To top it off, anyone who infringes upon even a licensed work and is brought to court need only say that they could not contact the artist as a defense. The Orphan Works Bill will protect the users of your work more than it will protect you, the creator. It could not be more obvious that this bill is an attempt to exploit artists worldwide in the guise of a noble cause." ~GraySapphire

Even if you can somehow afford to register your hundreds of images with multiple registries, there is still a chance your image will be orphaned anyways.


“Our technology can match images, or partial information of an image – such as a single face of one person in a crowd, with 99% success... Over the years, we have established relationships with our partners and now track the use of millions of digital files stored in our huge centralized database.”



"PicScout is just one of several firms that hope to benefit from the Orphan Works bill. They envision a future registry in which registered pictures will not be available for review or browsing. Instead a searcher would feed in a desired image and if there’s a match, get back only the artist’s name and contact information – or be told there is “no match.”

So far, so good – for all the pictures in the registry. But “no match” – there’s the rub.

You Can’t Find What’s Not in the Registry: Let’s say you haven’t registered a particular image in the system. In that case, the best technology in the world won’t find it there. So unless every picture you’ve ever done is registered, the searcher’s failure to find a match would actually orphan a non-orphaned image.

But let’s say you comply with this coercive bill. You register tens of thousands of your works with one or more commercial registries. Are these works now safe from infringement? No! They can still be orphaned. Here’s how:

PicScout’s claim of “99% success” concedes a margin of error of at least 1%. Sounds small, doesn’t it? But consider:

– Google has already said they intend to use millions of orphaned works. Other businesses will use millions more.
– One percent of every million searches means 10,000 registered images “accidentally” orphaned.
– Multiply 10,000 accidental orphans by millions of millions of searches and you have an astronomical number.
– These are images that will be orphaned even though the artists spent the time and money to register them.
– Will these artists be able to sue for infringement?
– Yes, but at their own risk, because
– The users’ use of registries will prove they did a “reasonably diligent search.”

And there’s another problem:
– It’s statistically impossible for each million searches to orphan the same 10,000 images.

Therefore:
– Every image you register will be permanently vulnerable to an infinite number of orphan opportunities; also:
– An image may turn up as a “match” on one registry – while being orphaned on another.

There are many reasons why international law forbids coerced registration as a condition of protecting your copyrights.We’ve just given you some." - Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner

PDF Info: [link] Works article by Mark Simon.pdf

LISTEN AND READ THIS FOR MORE
[link]

Don't let the Orphan Works Bill Pass! Or you will lose rights to your work as artists!!

Basically, all the work that you do, all the copyrights on it will be VOID.
Quote, "if Congress passes this law, YOU WILL LOSE THE RIGHT TO MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR OWN CREATIONS! Our government is NOW WORKING AGAINST US by allowing our own citizens TO STEAL OUR CREATIVE WORKS" (Simon, Mark).

Protect your rights and let your voice be heard! If not, and we do nothing, the bill will be passed by this summer

WRITE to the government! : [link]
it's very important to any artists out there. please check the link.. our copyrights ( past , present, future ) are in danger of becoming null and void because of this bill they're trying to pass!

If left un-attended , they are trying to pass this Bill by summer!

JOIN the FIGHT! Protect our rights as artists!!!

(gedi and corbis are supporting this.) (aka bill gates.) (google is also for it.)