As some of you, I'm sure, are aware, a great deal has recently been made over the proposed Bill for a Solution to the Orphan Works problem.

First of all, as a quick explanation for those of you who don't know, Orphan Works are basically works of any art (from any media, film, music or just art like that prominently found on this website) that no longer seem to have a copyright holder. This could be because either, the copyright holder is now deceased, has willingly given up copyright, or can simply not be found. The problem comes from the latter source of Orphan Works, when no copyright holder can be found.

You see, when you can't find the copyright holder of a certain piece of work, it's difficult to reproduce, use it or otherwise since you don't have permission from said copyright holder. Until now it has been thought that if that is the case, the piece of work should be left alone, and this has caused a number of works (very old films, for instance) to not be seen by current generations, or be lost from use.

A better explanation can be found here.

The Orphan Works bill seeks to fix this problem.

The Bill can be found here (PDF file).

In essence, how it would work, is that, if someone wanted to use a certain piece of work (artwork, music, film, etc) for any reason and no copyright holder was clear after a reasonable search, that piece of work would be deemed an Orphan Work and free to use without fear of copyright problems.

Now, many people seem to think that this is a way of allowing people to steal your work legally. One main source of this idea is this blog by Mark Simon, worth a read, if only to see the fears that seem to be holding people such as ourselves because of this Bill.

Now, the first thing you need to realise about that Blog page, is that no where on it is a link to the Bill, only Simon's interpretation of it. This to me, is like reading a book report instead of a book, yes, you will get an idea of the book, but a book report is 1, written by one person, with one point of view and 2, won't cover everything. It is for that reason, I gave you a link to the Bill above, read it yourself, come to your own conclusion.

Even still, after reading it myself, I still needed some things clarified about it, and I figured, who better to go to than James Boyle, co creator of the Bill. He is one of the authors of the Bill and one of the people who submitted it to the Copyright Office.

What you'll find below is my Email to Boyle, along with his response. Unfortunately, Boyle has requested that his email not be posted here, so what I will give is a basic summary. I won't comment on what he said, I feel it speaks for itself so I urge you to come to your own conclusions.

Dear James Boyle

I am a young artist working out of the UK, specialising in digitally created art and concept work. I recently came across your Analysis and Proposal detailing the problem with Orphan Works in the United States, submitted to the copyright office in March 2005.

Now, for reasons I don't rightly know, this has been brought up now and caused some controversy among artists such as myself who have art stored for presentation on the internet. If you are not aware of this, I shall point you to one web log entry by Mark Simon, found here who fears that if such a law was passed, work created by people such as myself or him would be in danger of legally being used by others without our permission.

Instead of jumping on a bandwagon and declaring war on yourself or this proposal, I decided to do a little research into this first which is what brought me to your proposal and, ultimately to yourself.

I have read the majority of the proposal (the PDF found on your website), specifically the part detailing what is actually proposed in order to solve the problem of Orphan Works and their usage by users and I do have a few questions, merely clarifications on a few issues.

1. How exactly would this law, if passed, effect work created by artists, past and future who are still living and perfectly able to identify themselves as copyright owners of their work. Many, like myself have created work in the recent past and have done nothing more, in the knowledge that such work would already be automatically copyrighted to them at the moment of its creation. Were someone else to use said work without the artists permission, that would be considered as theft and the original copyright holder would be within his or her rights to request removal of said work or request credit where credit's due. Should this bill be passed, would we astists now need to register our work for it to be copyrighted under our name? And would we need to do that for all past creations?

2. If the above is the case and my work now needs to be registered for copyright, should I fail to do that and my work be deemed Orphan Work, free to use and it indeed does become used without my pemission, would I still have the right to call copyright on said work and have it removed/ask for credit, or do I lose all copyright claim to the work once it has been deemed Orphan Work?

3. As you say, the UK and other countries already have laws dealing with such things as Orphan Works. How will this bill effect international work?

Looking forward to your answer.
Yours
Neil Joshi

**

Summary of his response:
1. Registering material for copyright will not be mandatory.
2. This bill wouldn't even apply to recent works, but would specify types and ages.
3. Rules on what constitutes a "reasonable search" for a copyright holder would be laid down, for which proof must be provided before a piece of work is deemd Orphan Work.
4. If a piece of work, deemed orphan work, is used, and then the original copyright holder appears and asks for it to be taken down, the user would be obliged.
5. The original copyright holder never loses copyright or control over their work.

I feel this article should be an excersise in not trusting the first source that you see on an issue. If you read a blog page or news article about something this controversial, don't immediately jump to the conclusion that they must be right (or indeed, wrong), but instead do your own digging and research, find the truth for yourself.