Splat | WiseTome.com

I came to know of an alarming bill that was submitted in the US legislation through this post at Public Knowledge. I say it is an alarming bill because if the bill passes the houses and becomes a law then all the works of artists who reside outside United States, and in some cases even with in, would find themselves at loss.

The bill was introduced on May 22nd, 2006 in the Houses of Representatives, United States. It seeks to amend the Title 17 of United States Code that would allow for remedies in case the copyright owner cannot be found. The particular code gives the people the rights over their intellectual works.

After some research and opinions I have heard from others, I feel that it has profound implications, and that it would allow people to steal works of artists, musicians, and the like - and hide behind the clause that the intellectual work was an orphan work.

According to the Act, here are the criteria under which a work would be considered an orphan work:

• authors, creators or copyright holders cannot be located
• the ‘all rights’ holders being corporations have gone defunct
• the authors or creators are unidentified

The Act allows people to use orphaned work for commercial purposes, and when they may not be sued later by the rightful copyright holders.

For US citizens, they may register their works at the US Copyright Office. By doing so, and taking other preventive actions like leaving their names on the work, a work can not be deemed as an Orphan Work.

I feel that it is a gross oversight by bill proposers, and I doubt there is heavy lobbyist influence in making this a law. More over, the act would defy the intellectual property of all artists who are not US citizens, as they have no means of registering their works at the US Copyright Office. Entities in US would be able to make use of works made by non-US citizens for commercial purposes and not pay these copyright holders - and yet they would not be seen as criminals by the US law. I feel that US cannot enact a law that would govern over works of people outside the United States, and doing so would be unethical.

The Graphic Artist’s Guild has a summary of the act and some of the preventive actions that US copyright holders may take against the tagging of their works as Orphan Works, over at their website.

What is your opinion?