Hello everyone,

I’m honored to be the first guest blogger here on the Orphan Works Opposition Headquarters. I’m going to speak from the perspective of an independent businessperson who uses her creative skills to make a living. I also was one of the varied groups of artists who visited Capitol Hill a few weeks ago for the purpose of calling on our elected officials regarding the Orphan Works bills before the House and the Senate.

If someone had told me a year ago I would be going to Washington D.C. to advocate for anything, I would probably have answered, “You must be thinking of someone else!” You see, I’m a girl of many pictures and not so many words, who, spends her days alone, (o.k. with my cats) in my studio, making art and design for licensing.

Quite frankly, I was surprised when we received the undivided attention and the apparent concern exhibited by most of those who we met with. Even more surprising, many of the elected officials or their staff whom we met with was either misinformed or unaware that working “creatives” were opposed to these bills! That’s right, they thought we were FOR the bills because this is what they had been told by the commercial entities that are pushing these bills! It was then that I realized how vitally important it is to make our voices heard. And thus, the reason for this website and the information made available through it. Please read through the downloads and information provided. . The very idea of walking into a Congressman’s office was mind numbing to me. I mean, what could “my story” do to make a difference?

My story is simple, I design large scrap booking kits with many pieces and parts (I’m talking thousands) which can in no way be identified by the standard © symbol and my name. The pieces are much too small and quite frankly, no scrap booker wants someone’s name on the products because it would be intrusive on their creations. Why is this a concern? Because these bills will create a necessity for me to use a privately owned, pay to use, “registry” in order to keep my art from becoming orphaned. With no name on all those little stickers, die cuts, etc; it would be a nearly impossible task for an infringer to find out whose art it is. In order to protect my (MY) property from being used against my wishes, I will need to pay for every single little design to be “registered” not only with the US Copyright office, (fee is $35. for on-line registration) but now, with these yet to be established “private registries” who are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, but as a profit making entity which can be bought, sold, closed, hacked into, or have a questionable motives for “not finding” my art. All this for an undetermined fee to be paid by the artists so their work is “made searchable”.  And, how many of these registries will there be? No one knows. Then, after the impossible burden of all this, an artist will still have no way of stopping an infringer who did a yet to be defined, “diligent search” and managed not to find me! This may cause a contractual conflict with my existing licensing partners.

If , after being infringed, and artist wants to retrieve a “mutually acceptable” fee from the infringer, he or she will have to foot the bill for both the lawyer and the court costs. And really, how much bargaining leverage does one have after the deed has been done? Licensing works very differently from selling your intellectual property rights. It’s a loan of your art to a manufacturer who pays you when/if the goods get sold. If the goods are well received, reorders are placed. A single image might be an enormous best seller generating income for many, many years. How can anyone know what the worth of that image is without letting it run it’s natural course through commerce?

I’m going to stop here for now. There are many additional issues of great concern, which you can read about in our talking points.

On a final note, here is a quick illustration I did after returning home from Washington.

Our art is something we create from within and often it feels like our “children”. This illustration reflects my feelings as a creator.

Thank you for visiting and considering my perspective.
– Brenda Pinnick

by Dena Matthews, Partner
LifeHouse Productions, Specializing in Biomedical Animation

Groups asserts passage of bills S. 2913 and H.R. 5889 in Congress would harm the general public and devastate small businesses by stripping current copyright law protections.

Without your consent or knowledge:

• Your child’s picture winds up on the cover of a pornographic DVD.
• A snapshot of your dog appears on billboards and buses nationwide.
• A photo of yourself is used to endorse a cigarette brand.

And there is practically nothing you can do to stop it.

These scenarios could be a reality if the pending “Orphan Works” legislation is enacted.

Remember how Napster shook music industry giants with a barrage of infringements in 2002?  The same thing is about to happen with visual works if the bills on the “rocket docket” are not stopped.  The law that protects you may be turned on its head.

“The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008″ (S. 2913) in the Senate and “The Orphan Works Act of 2008″ (H.R. 5889) in the House of Representatives, if enacted, would effectively allow anyone to steal copyrighted works for any purpose without fear of penalty.  They strip legal protections from creators and other copyright holders.

Any image, including the photos your child shares on Facebook and Flickr, would be fair game, too.  Unscrupulous profiteers will rest assured there will be little chance they’d be prosecuted.  They would find stealing your intellectual property; pictures, artwork and photography a lucrative business model.

How can this be?  The proposed bills would strip theft deterrents from current copyright law, which passively protects everyone including artists and photographers.  Without the ability to receive appropriate compensation or recoup damages for an infringement, most people just could not afford to pursue such a case.

Industry leaders along with a coalition of over 60 renowned associations support maintaining current copyright laws and protections as the Senate secretly “hotlines” the deceiving bill, avoiding public debate, with hopes of swift passage this week.

If the deceptive bills, sympathetically entitled, “Orphan Works”, pass in Congress, countless small businesses would be devastated – with a force like that of hurricane Katrina.  Departing from the current free and passive copyright protection all Americans enjoy, these bills require all private creative work in the world to be registered at the copyright holder’s expense, with countless, yet-to-be-created, visual recognition databases to be operated by as yet unnamed corporate entities. Those creative works not “found” in the databases would be considered legal “orphans” and free for anyone to exploit.

If the “Orphan Works Acts” are enacted and you don’t pay and register those photos your child posted on the Internet, someone else can claim them as “orphans” and use them to make a buck.  In fact, others could claim ownership to them and register them for themselves and there would be little you could do except drive to every adult entertainment shop in town and snap up those DVDs with you child’s photo on them.

Having to pay, register and submit each work and all its derivatives one has ever or will ever create is- in effect- an additional tax and inordinate burden on artists, photographers, and anyone else who wants to protect their intellectual property.

To learn more about the bills or join the coalition to preserve the copyright laws under attack by this critical bill that affects us all go to http://www.illustratorspartnership.org, and http://www.owoh.org.

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Brenda Pinnick is an award-winning artist and designer who created this free poster. She encourages you to download, print, and use to and help spread the word to stop of current Orphan Works legislation.  The poster is sized to print at 11×17 at 300 dpi. To download, click the poster to load the larger version.  Then either right-click on it and select save image, or click on the image and drag it directly to your desktop. Please share this with anyone you wish –  friends, family, coworkers, and so on.  Thank you Brenda for sharing your artwork to spread the message!

Please tell us how the proposed Orphan Works legislation will directly impact you.