Thank god we are not in the usa.

Does this mean that if someone in another country makes something someone in the USA can rip it?

havent we talk about the orphan bill a while ago? didn't it started because a columnist set the bomb on this subject with a lot of biased, misreaded information and then got bashed to the ashes for this?

correct me if i'm wrong, but again, feels like someone randomly reads a header and spreads the hysteria across the world w/o a clue of what they are talking about expecting to be a robin hood of the internets.

not to mention its aimed to people who makes a living of their art, not to STEAL JOO PIXELZ


Edited by Metaru - 09 January 2009 at 5:47pm

 Your furry pixeled kingdom hearts fan arts wont get stole by evil corporative stealing machines. not even Google Spiderbots wants to steal them.

Yeah but they're not new laws, they're old forgotten ones...

...aren't they?

Lets go do creative commons guys :)

I prefer Holland.
Relieable
No messing with my rights as artist
We sold the big brother concept and got rich, whitout having to watch that silly show ourselfs

What better country can there be?

Hahahaha! I have a colored history with copyright laws. On one hand, I love the digital millenium copyright act for the rights guaranteed to artists. On the other, I'm an avid pirate (moral pirate, if I like it, I buy it).

You do know that copyrights expire 70 years after the longest living owner's death, right?

Also, if there's no copyright symbol and it was published before 1963 then it's public domain.


If the OP is correct, then yes, I do believe that this would take away your rights, effectively making copyright like trademark, except with even less protection.

again, no one wants to claim your sh*t. no one will, so dont worry. period.

Well, I'm just glad I live in AUstralia, that way, no one can ever claim my sh*t, as long as we got dork kevin, he loves pixel art platform games....

Don't worry about Met, he's just having a little fun at our expense. He lives all the way down in Chile, so doesn't really need to concern himself with our liberties.

Evilagram, I might suggest actually reading the official, full text of the bill, instead of lifting what it says out of other peoples' interpretations.

Nothing in it says anyone will 'lose the rights to their work' unless they have literally abandoned them, and there is no way to get in contact with them, after a fairly extensive search.

You can be emphatic as you like, repeating over and over that 'we WILL lose our work!!!' but it's just plain not true. (; The bill is flawed, but you should read it before talking about it.

Isn't fairly extensive search something open to abuse. If I liked metaru's signature and wanted it on a t-shirt and didn't want to pay metaru any money, then couldn't i post metaru signature in a forum under someone else's name (eg. fakename). And in a court, if I can show that I tried reasonably hard to contact fakename, the damages I pay metaru are much smaller than with previous legislation. Is metaru's work covered by international copyright law or something? Would he be able to sue someone in america using international copyright law or is he only able to use american law? How long before international law is changed?

I don't think it is just spazzy DA people worried. This guy is smart and talented and he is worried: http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/2008/04/25/orphan-works-bill-due-this-week/ Also, didn't conceptart.org make a special registry to make it harder for people to steal works under the orphan works act? Why would they spend time/money unless they had legitimate concerns.

Check out the 'alex - the issue is extreme'. http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/392

There was also a post somewhere which i can't find which described how a newspaper stole someone's cartoon. Under the previous copyright legislation, he threated to sue them for large amounts (eg. legal fees, pulping etc.). Initially they told him to get stuffed. After he threatened to sue however, they were so scared about losing all that money they paid him a lot and agreed to buy his cartoons regularly. Sorry I only have vague details but the point is that someone familiar with using the existing legislation thought a 'good' outcome from his perspective couldn't be achieved with the new orphan works bill.

The orphan bill intro mentions statutory damages can be 30,000-150,000$. This is the stick. If you want people to do the right thing, carrot and stick. Orphan works removes statutory damages (replaces with reasonable compensation - no reimbursement for legal fees) so there is no stick. I'm no expert but I think 'blue' should explain why this change is a good thing for artists (screw libraries and documentary film makers) since he says it's 'not so bad'.

edit: I would consider this legislation to be a good idea is if there is a search engine that can scan the internet and match up a photo with any other photo. I've heard this mentioned a bit does anyone know of an example that is up and running? Also, as with metaru signature scam, i could print the image, scan it, rotate it so that it doesnt match using the engine ... also what if I got fakename to sign a NDA could I say that further searching is unreasonable?

Also does anyone think these mom and pop trying to repair their wedding photos stories are half truths - spin - crapola?

edit2: I'm not a professional artist, probably no-ones wants to rip off my stuff but STILL this change seems wrong. Its best summed up by this quote:

"Despite 127 pages of the Orphan Works Report, you need only common sense to tell you this: The primary goal of copyright law is not to make creators’ work available to others. If it were, there’d be no need for copyright law at all: everything would be free for anyone to use. Copyright law exists primarily to protect the property rights of creators and secondarily, to extend the benefits of the creator’s work to the public. It does this by defining specific, limited exceptions to the creator’s exclusive license. In doing so, the law promotes the useful arts and provides certainty to users and creators alike. Invert the law and you invert the only way it can benefit society."

http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00264


Edited by sharprm - 19 February 2009 at 5:19am

No, it means just the opposite.

Countries like France, Holland etc have produced high quality art and protected artists. A comparison should be made rather than conjectural thinking.