As all of you pretty much know about the Orphan Works Act that has been circulating around dA in the recent weeks, it is a hot topic.

No, I am not jumping on the bandwagon of users posting around in their journal about their artwork getting "stolen" if this law gets passed nor am I one of the users saying that this law is great because of all the orphaned works out there in the public domain. I am simply a user of dA that wants to convey this simple fact to the rest of the world. I know there has already been one more news post about the very same thing but not all users actually read the news.

To put it simply: "The Orphan Works act is an act that emphasizes the user's ability to search for the original artist. If you can not be found, and the end-user presents proof that he/she tried to find you, then your work may be used without accreditation or monetary payment."

Summary: They can't find you, they can use your art.

It does NOT mean that they can "legally steal" your art. It means that they can use your art if you can not be located.

And DeviantArt is not applicable for such an act. For those who use it, the Creative Commons license (herein after referred to as "CC") is a powerful thing. Simply because this is exactly what it says: a license. A CC license is in fact a form of copyright protection and DeviantArt has an agreement with [link] to license every piece of artwork that is submitted to their site if the user chooses to do so. If your artwork has no license, that is no ones fault but yours.

Here's how you apply a CC license to your artwork: When submitting a deviation, down near the bottom is a question. "Apply a Creative Commons license?" Click yes. That's it. Your artwork is now licensed under your username with a traceback to you. It is timestamped with the time you submitted it, and if it is a picture it even has the EXIF data (What model camera you used and when it was taken versus when it was submitted) on it right there.

The only part of the internet that this act would actually affect would be the artists who don't use a licensed site to post their artworks on, such as such as Private sites and Picture hosting sites (Like Photobucket). There is another easy way to combat this: Make your pictures link back to your DeviantArt account. For anyone who knows HTML, this should be a moderately simple task and no I will not be showing you how to do it.

This isn't a rant to stop the act, as I actually think it would help the orphaned works out there as there are really so many. Call me a jerk for wanting people to copyright their work, but if they don't copyright their own work then the problem lies with them and not the person who uses it. A copyright is fairly simple license to gain and anyone is able to obtain one for a piece of art.

Read up on the act before you post angry journal rants about it. Copyright violation has been going on even before the Orphan Works act was even thought of. Movie and Music Piracy anyone?