A publication that is aimed at Professional Photographers, but does not provide a link to the Pro-Imaging site, yet in most other articles does so (11 News Articles, 8 with links, 3 without, funnily enough one of the other articles with no link refers to another Copyright issue, The Orphan Works Bill!) and 6 pages later there’s a full page ad for one of the competitions mentioned in the article, is it April 1st! is it coincidence, lazy reporting or just another example of the apathy towards photographer’s rights?

Maybe it would be interested in submitting their own terms for the ‘Project Assistant Awards’ or the ‘Discovery Awards’ to Pro-Imaging and see which of the lists it would end up on?

Publications that support or are aimed at photography and photographers, amateur or professional, should be shouting loudly about photographer’s rights and supporting any initiative that does the same and in fact at OP©P think it’s time they should boycott competitions and companies that use such terms in their competitions (yes, we know it won’t happen any time soon) yet the phrase ‘Turn a blind eye’ comes to mind for some reason or could it have something to do with advertising revenue?

Those involved in the photographic industry should be supporting and protecting each other not creating indifference from within and while publications like the BJP have the non commitment shown, it may be a long road we tread.

We’ve set up an on-line site for visual artists to e-mail their Senators and Representatives with one click.
This site is open to professional artists, photographers and any member of the image-making public.
We’ve provided sample letters from individuals representing different sectors of the visual arts.
If you’re opposed to the Orphan Works act, this site is yours to use.

For international artists and our colleagues overseas, we’ve provided a special link, with a sample letter and instructions as to whom to write.

2 minutes is all it takes to write Congress and protect your copyright:

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

Please forward this message to every artist you know.

Whilst obviously US orientated as it says it provides a link for international artists or see links below.

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP

A Reminder:
Tonight, Tuesday, May 6 at 6:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (U.S.) (11pm GMT)
Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work.
An open forum to oppose the Orphan Works Act.

The Society of Illustrators
128 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10065
Admission will be free.

Panelists:
Terry Brown Director, American Society of Illustrators Partnership, Director Emeritus, Society of Illustrators
Constance Evans Executive Director, Advertising Photographers of America, artist
Dr. Theodore Feder President, Artists Rights Society
Brad Holland Artist, Co-founder, Illustrators Partnership
Cynthia Turner Medical illustrator, Board Member, Illustrators Partnership
William Vasquez Photographer, Co-Chair, Advertising Photographers of America/NY Chapter

This event will be streamed live here: http://video.cmitnyc.com/society/soi_2008_05_06.html
If you unable to access it tonight, it will be archived for delayed webcast, starting tomorrow.

Also: stay tuned for a link to our push-button letter-writing website: Take Action/Write Congress.
The link to this advocacy site will be emailed to you directly.

Please forward or post this announcement in its entirety to any interested party.

Obviously a little late to be getting a flight but as it says it will be archived for future viewing/reference.

Thanks to The Illustrators Partnership for the updates.

You are cordially invited to attend an important industry-wide event.

Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work
An open forum to oppose the Orphan Works Act of 2008
Tuesday, May 6 6:00 PM
The Society of Illustrators
128 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10065
Admission will be free

The Orphan Works Act of 2008 will endanger the rights of anyone who creates intellectual property.

It will expose your art to commercial infringement. It will include work from professional paintings to family snapshots. It will include published and unpublished work. It will include any image that resides or has ever resided on the internet. It will force you to register every picture you do with privately-held commercial registries. It will make all unregistered works potential orphans.

This radical change to U.S. copyright law will shift the burden of diligence from infringers to rights holders. It is wrong to give infringer’s the right to make money from your property without your knowledge or consent. You should not have to pay businessmen to keep the work you’ve created.

The Orphan Works Act is an assault on national and international copyright laws. It’s an assault on the property and privacy rights embodied in them.

Illustrators, photographers, fine artists: let’s come together and act to keep Congress from orphaning our work.

This event will be webcast live.
Panellists at this forum will include:

- Brad Holland Hall of Fame artist who has testified against the Orphan Works Act of 2006 in both the House and Senate
- Cynthia Turner Award-winning medical artist who has collaborated in written testimony to both the House and Senate
- Constance Evans Photographer, painter and Executive Director of Advertising Photographers of America
- Terry Brown Director Emeritus of the Society of Illustrators, currently Director of the American Society of Illustrators Partnership
- Others to be announced.

To learn more about the Orphan Works Bill, listen to the interview with Brad Holland:

mp3 Version

YouTube Version

For additional background on Orphan Works, go to the IPA Orphan Works Resource Page for Artists

Also be aware:

We believe they are setting up a site to “help visual creators from around the world tell the U.S. Congress how this bill affects their ability to protect their copyrights and license their works fairly.”

Please subscribe to our mailing list to make sure you get the notice in a timely fashion so you can pass it on to U.K. visual artists.

To subscribe, please send an e-mail to illustratorspartnership@cnymail.com
Place “Add Name” in the subject line, and provide your name and the email address you want used in the message area.

For more information see links below.

6. Proprietary Rights in Content on TinyPic.
6.1 TinyPic does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) that you post on or through the TinyPic Services. By displaying or publishing (”posting”) any Content on or through the TinyPic Services, you hereby grant to TinyPic and other users a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels. Content will be publicly available, and TinyPic and other Users may copy or display Content outside of the TinyPic Services through the quick link feature or through any other display mechanisms.

Whilst most professionals do not use such services the fact still needs highlighting that these ‘licenses’ are way ‘ott’ and seems like whilst they (the providers) want you to do all the work and use your images and let others use them, for what ever they like and take no responsibility for it.

(d) irrevocably grant to the Promoter, the Sponsor and its subsidiaries and affiliated companies, a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, and publicly display the Photograph in any media throughout the world for any purpose, without limitation, and without additional review, compensation, or approval from you or any other party.

Also note:

In addition to the Weekly Prize, the Grand Prize Winner will win the “Grand Prize” as follows:
(a) have their winning Photograph included in a LG Viewty advertisement which will appear in National Geographic Magazine; and
(b) a cash prize of US $10,000 for sole rights to said picture.

4. A condition to the award of the Grand Prize to the Grand Prize Winner will be that the Grand Prize Winner shall assign to the Promoter absolutely all rights, title and interest, including copyright and the Grand Prize Winner shall do all things as may be required to vest such interest in the Promoter prior to receiving the Grand Prize.

5. In participating in the Promotion, the Winners agree to participate and co-operate as required in all editorial activities relating to the Promotion, including but not limited to being interviewed and photographed. The Winners hereby grant the Promoter a perpetual and exclusive licence to use such footage and photographs and the Winners will not be entitled to any fee for such use.

So $10,000 (approx £5,000) for the Grand Prize, sounds tempting but is the money a prize or a cheap way for LG, National Geographic and flickr to get a worldwide advertising campaign puppet, depends on how you value your morals I suppose.

This feature will include templates and information when dealing with © abuse.

Examples:

Here you will find various templates relating to and for use in the pursuit of retaining your copyright and reporting abuse and will include templates for letters to:

• MySpace

MySpace have always honoured my requests for taking pictures down, but the procedure can seem little convoluted and unfair (people just upload your pics but you have to go through the hoops to get them taken down) and as I can imagine they are busy it can take a few weeks before you hear anything.

• Web Sites Administrators/Owners

Most web sites have a ‘Contact’ link, if not it is quite easy to found out who owns a site.

• Publications

One good thing about publications is that they can’t remove any offending pictures but be aware they may have used any images in good faith depending on who supplied the image(s) (which is what you need to find out first before any action against the publication in question).
I once found an image used for advertising a tour in the NME and all it took was a phone call to the NME to find out who supplied the image and it was nothing to do with the NME, which I knew but had to confirm, so I had to (successfully) sue the offending company.

• Hosting Companies

If you can’t or don’t get a response from a web site or owner you can report the © abuse to the hosts of the site and request they take the site off their servers. (Hosting companies have their own T&C relating to copyright infringement)

OP©P

[Please Note* This feature is unfinished and this notice will be removed when it is. Thank you]

Social bookmarking is now installed on the posts so share the news!

Apologies for the delay in implementing ‘The List’ but I am a one man band and only have two hands, a tired brain, a large family and not enough sleep, so…. it is in the final stages of testing and should be up in a couple of days.

Just a few more changes and moving stuff around and all will be done.

House version [PDF]
http://209.197.116.91/SAA_PDFnew/Orphan_Works_House_04-24-08.pdf

What people have to say:

Copyright Action
http://copyrightaction.com/forum/orphan-works-bills-introduced-in-usa

Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Board of the Illustrators’ Partnership
Illustrators’ Partnership Article Here

Stock Artists Alliance
Stock Artists Alliance Call For Action

Every photographer and anyone to do with the industry in the world should oppose this Bill by whatever method is at your disposal, it’s outrageous and the only people that will profit from it are the ‘Commercial Registries’ and the Infringer’s who will have a worldwide free picture library, how? easy, download picture, strip metadata, “Couldn’t find author” Thank you very much!

Don’t think it doesn’t affect you because your not in the US and it wouldn’t surprise me if the UK takes a similar stance.

In layman’s terms as the Admin @ Copyright Action puts it:

If this Bill goes through, every image on the planet which is unregistered with the privatised registries that the Bill proposes, will potentially become an Orphan work and free to use. The potential user has only to show that they did a sufficient search, which the Bill makes clear will be heavily defined by search of these commercial registries. No registration = orphan work.

Think of what this means in the context of, say, Flickr. Every unprotected photo is eligible to become wholly-owned stock by theft. This Bill is a planetary copyright grab.

It speaks for itself….

The first one is to PhotoRights.org, it seems EPUK have been busy adding strength to their campaign to the already published Copyright Action, I quote:

PhotoRights.org exists to document and record the actions of those who through lack of comprehension, bone-headed officiousness, vested interest or malice, wish to contain and control photography.
We invite participation from all UK amateur and professional photographers and anyone else who values photographic liberty. If you encounter access problems please report them in the forums here and help to demonstrate the scale of the problem before misconceived and often illegal restriction is accepted as inevitable and normal.

Whilst not immediately concerned with copyright it does just show how photographers and our rights are dismissed and treated for unreal concerns and paranoia.

The second is interesting as it has been created by an individual photographer who uses flickr himself and we applaud him for that:

Flickr Photorights Group

The objective of this group is to provide useful information to photographers regarding their shooting rights, their licensing rights, the value of their work and how to protect it and other information pertinent to photography and the law.