It seems that the USA has decided to help out art theft by planning to introduce the "Orphaned Works Bill".
I've already got about 150 notes already telling me to write something about the issue, so here I am. So, instead of writing me more notes- post responses in this journal. I've got about 100 different articles and journals talking about the bill... however I don't actually see the bill itself (since it's not released to the public or displayed anywhere).... so lets call it "Imaginary" for now and using all the information gathered, lets imagine what it's about and what will happen once it's out:

This is apparently a bill that is in plans to be passed this summer in the USA.
Basically, it's about ability to Google artworks, take them and sell them, if you "can't find an owner".

This bill does NOT legalize art theft. It merely MIGHT give art thieves a new type of defense in court outlined in...
This Imaginary example, in the imaginary world of teh future:
Person A steals your artwork and makes 10'000 dollars off it. You sue them. They claim that they found the work on Google and it had no signature.
This is all because some random idiot B decided to crop your signature out and post your artwork on their blog.
Person A tries to contact blogger B, but blogger B forever abandoned his blog, changed his email and went to join myspace instead, died horribly from myspace-itis and therefore he can't be reached.
Person A says that he did years and years of research and couldn't find the original artist, therefore he can't be blamed.
You lose the case and get nothing except for massive legal fees that you have to pay your lawyer for fighting person A.





It's all VERY theoretical- and will be decided in real life once this bill is passed and such a defense is actually used in court.


Another theory that jumps out of this bill is that companies will spring up all over USA that will scam poor gullible artists into "copyright protection", by registering their work. Many of these companies are "predicted" to fail, not actually protect your art, and take your money with them to the grave.



MORE imaginary problems that MIGHT spawn once the bill is passed:
It's rather easy to remove signature/watermark from your artwork and claim that as an orphaned piece.
People have done that already! I had to go and beat an apology and mah credit out of them.
Currently there's about 10'000 copies of my artworks floating on the internet- in many of them my signature was either cropped out, removed or somebody else's logo pasted over them. Do you expect me to run around after EVERY website?
Especially massive websites like imageshack, Flickr [link] , Photobucket where people post my art under the pretense of sharing, not reading any agreements that they shouldn't post work that doesn't belong to them or edit it?

Just take a look at these websites found this week by my fans:
[link]
(this website credited me in Russian only and pasted their logo over my signature in some paintings)

[link]
(this website gives my image out as cellphone wallpapers without even crediting me)

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Main problem with this issue is that the bill isn't out yet for us to read and all the bad and good sides that stem from it as just theories.
So we're merely fighting theories that might occur in a foreseeable future.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


To confirm and add to a thousand rants:
We have to wait until the bill is released to the public to be 100% certain about it.
We do not have an actual bill, except for the 2005 version if it, which was rejected back then.


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If u do wish to inform zee world the bill:
Write your own journal about it, with linkage to here.



So far we have 3 parties formed on the interwebz, represented by following emoticons for clarity:
, and


1) I HATE THAT idiotic bill:
(audio broadcast)
[link]

2) I LOVE the bill, because it is awesome:
[link]

3) The bill does not exist, it's all in your minds people:
[link]

Who will you join?

Knowledge is power. However- whether any argument is correct we shall know once the 2008 bill is actually released to the public.
(This journal updated further as more information comes in via internet highways.)

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On an unrelated note, feel free to join mah awesome contest and win subscriptionz:
[link]