U.S. Orphan Works Act of 2008 (Copyright Changes)
A good friend posted this on another forum... I thought I'd post it here as well.
I'm not a lawyer... nor am I a pro photographer (FAR from either), but this SEEMS like it could have some pretty chilling affects on sites like this in terms of willingness of it's participants to post thier work. Not to mention the implications of the bill in general.
Has anyone here heard of... looked into... or can otherwise shed some light on the subject?
How does this change or affect current copyright protection?
I understand even now, for an image to truly be copyright protected, it has to be registered. Dunno if that's true or not...
Steve
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It appears that the Orphan Works Bill removes any protection or recourse any artist, illustrator or photographer currently has to prevent copyright piracy. The passage of the bill means that any image online can be used by anyone for any purpose without basically (reasonable search) checking for ownership.
It also means that any personal images one has online can be used for any purpose, editorial or commerical without permission of the person or persons in the image.
Proponents of the bill are stating that a registration system will take care any unauthorized use of images.
For detailed information about the bill and it's history go to this site: Orphan Works Bill
You may also want to check here
