You select which letter you want to send, click on the "Take Action Link" under the description, fill in the info and send. Maybe you were confused because they have many templates for the same cause?
It may not be layed out that well, but I didn't have any problems.
I'll have to read the bill's proposal more carefully, but this seems like an excellent change to me; it rolls back the changes introdcued by the Berne convention which made "unclaimed" works copyrighted by default.
The problem with works that do not specifically claim copyright is that there is no way to tell who may own them, if indeed anyone does. The author might have died, and if the work is undated no one knows if the normal copyright terms have run their course.
The other problem is that, let's say you decide to use my art without paying me for it. I now have no legal ground to sue you. You can always claim you "found it" and tried yer durndest to figure out where it came from, couldn't find the author, and went ahead. Even if I put my name on all copies before I sent them out into the world (which is still legally my copyright) you could just take it off again. Basically, this bill makes it a LOT harder for artists to protect their rights in a court of law. The trick is in the wording of the bill, as I understand it, in what constitutes a "reasonable attempt" to find the author of a work.
Ah, but the copyright registry provides a single point of reference for determining the disposition of the work. If you file a copyright registration, it doesn't matter if someone else took your name off the work and then some other party found it later.
This puts copyright into the same framework as patents and trademarks, the other two forms of temporary intellectual property monopoly granted as a specific act by the government, not as a recognition of any intrinsic right of authors over their works.
In theory, that's a great idea. Except that it costs just a little bit, to register a copyright. And with most artists, you are talking about hundreds of thousands of images. The trick is, usually, we don't exactly know what other people will think is cool. I mean, after awhile, you kind do, but still. Most artists are not going to have the money or inclination to copyright every thing they own or have done. In the case of freelance artists (a field that is diminished in size every year, thanks in large part to image banks) they might be creating illustrations for different companies (advertisements, magazine illustration, book covers, etc) every week. And each of those images as a VERY tight contract regarding rights for usage (limitations, and reprint limitations, etc). Even as things are at the moment, freelance artists are almost never paid till 90 days after the due date for the job, and then it's pretty common for them to have to chase the corporations down for their money. And it's also hard to get the credits printed. These
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Feh.
(I do non-profit marketing for a living so this is especially egregious to me! A lesson in how NOT to do it.)
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You select which letter you want to send, click on the "Take Action Link" under the description, fill in the info and send. Maybe you were confused because they have many templates for the same cause?
It may not be layed out that well, but I didn't have any problems.
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The problem with works that do not specifically claim copyright is that there is no way to tell who may own them, if indeed anyone does. The author might have died, and if the work is undated no one knows if the normal copyright terms have run their course.
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This puts copyright into the same framework as patents and trademarks, the other two forms of temporary intellectual property monopoly granted as a specific act by the government, not as a recognition of any intrinsic right of authors over their works.
It seems like a good idea to me.
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