ACT NOW!

A message from the President and the Copyright Chair of CAPIC

The United States Congress is on the verge of voting on a Bill called the "ORPHAN WORKS BILL''. Lobbyists from the motion picture industry, the internet industry, associations of museums and others are promoting this Bill. This proposed legislation stipulates that any work where the author is not known could be used and commercialized at will if a "reasonably diligent search" has failed to find the author. The scope of this "reasonably diligent search" would be determined by the user/infringer.

This Bill targets all types of work: from professional paintings to family snapshots, artistic work, commercial work, personal and wedding photos, published or non-published, from literary works, to music, to visual arts, to film and works that reside or have ever resided on the internet or have been disseminated by any media.

The Bill may be more damaging to the visual arts and music because this kind of work is more frequently disseminated on the web without due credit or, in some instances, with the artists name removed. This will also have an enormous impact on indigenous people's culture since their work is never attributed to any individual.

Consider an example: How would a person from Arkansas or Nigeria know about this law, that it even exists, that it affects him, that he has to register in an American registry for a fee, to protect his wedding picture or pictures of his children from being used by an American corporation or a non-for-profit-organization that may reflect values that are against his religion or his ethics which could add insult to injury? This is the just one instance of the damage the passage of this bill into law could do.

At the same time this Bill will promote the creation of privately held commercial registries. Private corporations will be able to create registries where all authors will have to register all of their work to protect them from becoming orphaned: ie; for a photographer, every click of the camera, for an illustrator, every sketch. Any work not registered could become orphaned and could be used and/or commercialized by any American entity. It will be the private sector that will decide the cost and the means of registering one's work.

Even if this Bill becomes a law in the United-States it will have a very big impact on creators around the world, on creators like you and me. This Bill, when passed into law, will not make any difference between the works created by an American citizen and the works created by anyone else in the world.
The implication is that EVERY work from everyone in the world would have to be registered in the USA. This will create two different worlds with unfair competition: Only Americans will be able to appropriate most of the world work's, while this practice will stay illegal in the rest of the world. Meanwhile, it may well induce a crash in the price of licensing work everywhere else.

This law violates the international Berne Treaty and the TRIP negotiations (Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property TRIPs UNESCO.)
It may be susceptible to an international lawsuit under international treaties.

Many American creator's associations are against this Bill. They are asking their members to write letters to Congressman and Senators. They are also asking the same from the international community.

When this law is enacted in the US, the same lobbies will ask other governments to do likewise. If we do not voice our concern now it may be difficult to voice it later with credibility when the same law may be presented in one's own country.

We are asking you to take a minute and write a letter and fax it to Washington. Do not think it won't make a difference. It will.

A letter that you could use is available via the link below (In the post below). The link is to the Illustrators' Partnership in the US. We agree with their arguments.

This Bill could be voted on in a few weeks. We urge you to act in the next few days.


Andre Cornellier and Ewan Nicholson
Copyright Chair and President
CAPIC
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