Copyright threat

The "orphan works" copyright legislation proposal is claimed to be a trojan horse. This artist (audio interview) says that nothing at all will be protected if not registered.

I hesitate to report on theses kinds of scary stories, because most of them turn out to be a storm in a glass of water (as the Danes say, I guess the English expression is "tempest in a teacup"). But Brad Holland in the audio interview sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

On the other hand, this article pretty much completely contradicts it. Strange that I got both links from the same newsletter.

So maybe you can just regard this, just like 98% of all those scare stories which seem to be part of the human condition.

Eric injected:
It seems like people are too damn scared about their work being used in ways they won't like. That's the risk you take when you produce something. Art and ideas aren't solely the property of the person that creates them and you're not always going to be given your proper dues when your creations are shared. Creative people stifle themselves when they're always thinking, "what am I gonna get out of this?"

I'm not saying it's right if you produce something, somebody claims the entire work as their own and you never get any credit for it. Artists and writers need to eat too. It's just that so much effort is expended to ensure something can't be "stolen" when really what they're trying to do is prevent the natural process of integrating a piece of art into the mass consciousness. That's something to embrace, not for commercial purposes but because it means another human voice has been immortalized in expressions that go beyond the individual ego.

From what I understand of this potential law is, as has been pointed out, that isn't being finalized by lawmakers and, if it does become a law, the effects aren't going to be as drastic as some would have you believe. My understanding is that when, and only when, the original creator of the work cannot be tracked down but it's been made available to the public it can then be used as we want to use it. That actually seems pretty sensible to me, at least in theory. The next part of the discussion is what constitutes an effort to find the creator, how much effort is enough (How many e-mails need to be sent? How many phone calls need to be made?), and how much time should be allowed between when you attempt to make contact and when the work is freed for use.

"Folks, the world as we know it is not going to end today. Sorry to disappoint you. As consolation we're handing out pictures of dogs in funny hats. There's only enough for half of you so please trample each other on your way to claim them."

I have long said that copyright is one of those things, like love, that you want to hold not too loosely and not too tightly, like an egg or a bird. If you find yourself crippling your production or your works in order they don't get stolen, maybe you're holding too tightly.

In early days of Domai, a lot of the material was found orphaned. Unfortunately some of it was "orphaned". Cough. But this was not because I was unwilling to pay for it, but because in those days there was a dearth of good simple nudes to be found, so I used what I did find. Fortunately after the millennium that situation started to change, and in recent years my problem has been quite the opposite: how to have the heart to reject all the fine work which I can't buy. I think that happy situation happened due to at least two factors: the fame of the site itself and what it expired, and the advent of affordable, quality digital cameras.