Once again, and in that spirit I talked about last time of getting political, there is no better time nor cause for photographers or publisher’s to make their voices heard over than the Orphans Works bill in the House and Senate. Very powerful lobbying groups have pushed this cause to the detriment of individual artists, be they photographers, painters, illustrators, writers, poets, film or video producers or musicians.

YOUR WORK IS ON THE LINE! Your copyright will not stand much ground if this bill is passed by the Congress. They have come back into a lame-duck session and while they say they won’t bring this up again there is also talk of killing the entire Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, where this issue currently is in debate. Then it would be taken up again by the full Judiciary Committee, where it was hatched many months ago.

Why do we need to abolish this bill? Because, it will take away your copyright protections without any due process. If some says they tried to find out who the artist was, they will be protected. How can we prove that?!? We will also be required to not just register our images with the copyright office, but also pay to have them listed with some new company – and this will be fee based depending on the number of images in the case of photographers.

To see the news release from the Advertising Photographers of America (APA) and the Illustrators Partnership use this link: OrphanWork.

Then write your congress person and Senators. But do it NOW! It will only take a few minutes and you can follow the links on the APA & Illustrator partnership pages to get it done in minutes – they even have the letters written for you – which you can customize to your liking.

Do it now, before you loose your rights.