Oh geez, another pesky non sequitor:

There is a storm brewing that is affecting the creative community in a larger dimension that I need to bring to your attention. Spearheaded by people like Brad Holland, and Cynthia Turner are the putting up opposition to what MAY become law. You think this won't affect you" Think again. Vampires like Bill Gates are trying to gain ownership of the whole Image Bank of pictures regardless of author and artist. This is frightening for creators of images. oppose this law. Write to your politicians and explain that this is theft by corporation. Don't be lazy asses and think this is inconsequential.
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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 It will include published and unpublished work.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 infringers 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.
Panelists 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: http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html
YouTube version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=CqBZd0cP5Yc

For additional background on Orphan Works, go to the IPA Orphan Works Resource Page for Artists
http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00185

Thanks Mark. We need an organized uprising to address this.

To anyone else: go to the site. It makes it really easy for you to address your legislators.

Thanks, Michelle. Thanks for noticing.

Everyone else: we're ASKING you to do a simple thing here - Voice opposition to big conglomerates like Getty taking and "owning" images belonging to their creators.

A REMINDER:
Tonight, Tuesday, May 6 at 6:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (U.S.)
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 tonight: 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 posted ASAP

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

SOMEDAY AN ILLUSTRATOR OR PHOTOGRAPHER WILL RETURN THE FAVOR. CLICK A BUTTON FOR US.

I don't know if any of you designers give a damn about the fight for image rights, but I'm going to post this anyway:

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FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS' PARTNERSHIP

Take Action: Don't Let Congress Orphan Our Work

We’ve set up an online 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/

Show some support for us. Someday we'll return the favor.

The question is - for the designers on this site - why should I care about illustrators and photographers rights?

What it comes down to is that image makers may, in the future, need to register their work, their intellectual property, with one of several national/international databases or face having their work "orphaned" and then picked up by image bank conglomerates to be sold and resold.
Illustrators and photographers wouldn't be cut out altogether, but it's a giant step to Stock being the only image permitted. This may sound paranoid, but I've always seen that paranoia is 90% right.

I've written to my congressmen and gotten stock letters back and on further writing the false flags came up. I believe it's important to keep at it and make them talk. Make them vote against this. But its a numbers game, and so I'm ASKING you people to say something. Not to me, but to the Congress. My esteem for designers is sinking low right now.....

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP

Backers of the Orphan Works bill are circulating their Talking Points:

“Neither the House nor the Senate drafts of the bill contain the word “registries,” [they write] but rather they require users to search non-governmental databases of copyrighted works. The purpose of any database is not meant to take the place of copyright registration, but to have a way to search for visual images. Any participation in such a database would be voluntary.”

But this doesn’t mean what it appears to say. Take it point by point:

Talking Point #1: “Neither the House nor the Senate drafts of the bill contain the word ‘registries.’ ”
Response: Correct. They contain the word “databases,” a synonym:

Registry: register: an official written record of names or events or transactions
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Database: A database is a structured collection of records or data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database

Q: Why a synonym?
A: Because international copyright law forbids member countries to impose registries as a condition of protecting copyrights: Berne/Article 5(2) ”The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality.” http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/5.html

In other words, if they used the word “registries” in the bills, it would be a red flag to other countries that the US is flirting with non-compliance with international treaties.

Talking Point #2: “...rather they [the bills] require users to search non-governmental databases of copyrighted works.”
Response: Non-governmental databases” means databases maintained in the private sector.
For users to find your work in these commercial databases, your work would first have to be in the database.
Work not in the database would be orphaned.

Talking Point #3: “Any participation in such a database would be voluntary.”
Response: Congress cannot pass a bill making registration mandatory because that would violate Berne/Article 5(2).
And that would state explicitly to other countries that the US no longer intends to honor its international agreements.
There are red flags all over these talking points.

Summing up: The Orphan Work bills would mandate the creation of registries by commercial interests.
You would not be legally forced to place your work with these for-profit registries.
But failure to do so would orphan your work.

The deceptive talking points accompanying this bill are another red flag.

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

Take Action/ Write Congress http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

Over 37,000 messages have been sent from the site in the last 48 hours. Please spread the word.

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