http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html

Currently under copyright law if you create a piece of artwork, it is copyrighted, whether registered or not. Further that copyright is manageable 70 years after the death of the artist.

This interview link (above) is a podcast (really long) and details a bill coming out of Congress on "Orphaned Works".

The stated intent of the bill is to remove copyright protection to an assortment of old pieces of artwork so that the public can do with copyrighted materials as they see fit, unless artists have paid to register their work in some private sector artwork repositories.

The problem with the bill is that as it now stands all artists will lose their copyrights, all artists will likewise be required by law to register all their works with image registry firms that don't even exist yet, in digital form. This means if you're an artist and have thousands of works of art, you've got to scan them all in, and then choose the right private sector repository (which doesn't exist yet, but will by law have to...), pay whatever is required, and deposit such works in a searchable format. 

SOme interesting details from the interview include the marxist underpinnings that motivated the creation of this bill, Google's stated agenda to destroy all copyright law, Bill Gates and another billionaire's lobbying of congress to essentially "unionize" all artists--creating it impossible to be an independent artist any longer.

Anyhow... I thought it was interesting. A lot of my friends who are artists are upset about it. Probably not anyone here who cares about this sort of thing... but thought I'd share it.

--Ray