An Orphan Works bill has been introduced by both the US House and Senate. You can read more about it here: Orphan Works bill introduced in US. What’s your take?
{democracy:4}
Poll: Are you for or against Orphan Works legislation?
By
John Watson
I think the comment about irrational fear is way-off – Having followed some discussion of the Act it appears that to protect all work , by registering with an unknown number of privately run agencies, for a working photographer at today’s rates would cost way too much time or money. Simply having copyright info in metadata won’t protect against misuse and provide for satisfactory settlement of dispute. Much metadata gets stripped and amended by agencies and doubtless by infringers. All the potential infringer has to prove is that they went to one or more of these , currently non-existent, agencies, find the work wasn’t lodged there and use with impunity. It’s a thieves charter pure and simple.
Incidentally the act in Canada is a far different beast and actually seemingly does the job intended without having these knock-on effects. The big corps in the US want to fast-track this lousy act for very good reason. If you are outside the US as I am, this will affect you too. It may get enacted before being stuck down as contravening the Berne convention but that will be too late.
Even if you are not a pro photographer do you really want corps making money from your images when you post them all over cyberspace for them to use with impunity? This is what the act serves up for pro’s might protect some of their work , but joe-public sure as heck won’t nearly as much.
What we end up with is a very heavily skewed playing-field in favour of infringers.
What are the differences in the Canadian version?