Orphan Works - Legalized Scumbaggery?
May 6th, 2008
Lot of frothing going on in the design community, revolving around an alleged bit of scumbaggery - The Orphan Works Act - sitting in front of Congress. Summed up - an Orphan Work is to be considered any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has lost control of their copyright, by design, passage of adequate time (nothing new), or by lack of proper registration (very new) and when folks who want to use the work haven’t been able to track down the original copyright owner (very, very new). Under international law, copyright protection on a creative work is automatic, and this does seem to be at odds with standing conventions.
I had a skim read of the legal-heavy document and it would seem to suggest that under certain conditions, people can use someone else’s artwork, writing or music without permission. Or more importantly payment. Unless the work is registered with some yet-to-be-built database. Sounding rather draconian, Bill H.R. 5889, as the Orphan Works proposal is formally known, has stirred up a veritable hornet’s nest among creative types. Not surprising really. Award winning animator Mark Simon has a go - quoting such luminaries as Roger Dean (designer of the Yes logo and discussed in our best band logos feature). Dean has this to say about a similar effort across the pond -
This will devastate the livelihood of artists, photographers and designers in a number of ways. That at the behest of a few hugely rich corporations who got rich by selling art that they played no part in the making of, the U.S. and U.K. governments are changing the copyright laws to protect the infringer instead of the creator. This is unjust, culturally destructive and commercial lunacy. This will not just hurt millions of artists around the world.
Pretty heavy stuff. I’ve always been a huge fan of Dean, and I’d generally respect his opinion on anything to do with design. Admittedly I’m not too up on all this, so I’m going to root around the interwebs to see what’s what. I’ve found a load of resources for illustrators and designers that will take a month of Sundays to go through. Most designers, artists and illustrators seem to be falling squarely in the ‘nay’ camp. There’s people who are pro this bill - called themselves Save Orphan Works (the version in front of Congress is apparently a re-boot of an earlier attempt) who describe the new bill thusly;
Orphan works are — broadly speaking — any copyrighted works where the rights holder is hard to find. Because the cost of finding the owner is so high, creators can’t build on orphan works, even when they’d be willing to pay to use them. In many cases the works were abandoned because they no longer produced any income. In most cases, rights holders, once found, are delighted to have their work used.
Hmm. Not liking the sound of this ‘hard to find‘ routine. And because it’s too expensive to find the owner, copyright goes out the window? Not sure I’m hip with the ‘delighted to have their work used‘ deal either. There’s been many a time work from The Logo Factory, has been used without our permission. Delighted isn’t really the term I’d use to describe how we felt. Anyhoo, this Orphan Works plan certainly looks like it needs more investigation before I pull the fire-alarm.
Update: Hopping around a few links and found this. Plagiarism Today has a great form letter that designers opposed to Orphan Works can send their congresscritters. Also explains the rub to the bill in easy to understand language. And here’s a petition. There’s always a petition.
