If you are in the business of creating, in any way shape or form, you owe it to yourself and your colleagues to voice to the congress RIGHT NOW your opinion on the Orphan Works Bill.
If you don’t know about it, in short, it gives companies the opportunity to claim fair use of your work if they can’t find the copyright. So, anything that looks unclaimed will be fair game. It is bad enough with microstock and other industries contributing to the demise of value of creative works…this gives companies (the huge ones that will steal your work for advertising purposes on many occasions) a legal waiver to do so. It has been put before the Senate and knocked down a few times thanks to vocal and vigilant creatives and a few Senators willing to stand up and put it down. During this Wall Street crisis nonsense, the bill has been hotlined, essentially pushed rapidly through the Senate without some members even knowing because all of their energy is focused on the current economic situation. In short, some sneaky folks with special interests took advantage of an opportunity to slip this bill in under the rug and next thing we know, away it goes to the House for it’s next step.
Write your congressman, to help stop it now. Please. Vocal creatives have helped keep this bill at bay before and we can do it again.
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