Stumble it!
A really bad case of plagiarism and an awful copyright law has made me very uneasy over the past few weeks.
Art and interviews stolen and put on sale for $100.
I received a disturbing email last week from Darren Di Lieto, the creator of the illustration news portal the Little Chimp Society. He recently found out about a book being published that plagiarizes content from his site. The book is called Colorful Illustrations 93°C, and it has not only reprinted the website’s artist interviews word-for-word, but it has also swiped tons of images from both LCS and the artists’ websites.
Please read Darren’s blog post to get the entire story. He is having trouble finding the publisher (which seems to be a fake) and the resellers he has contacted are unwilling to take the book off the shelves. Please do what you can to help spread the word - write a blog post, email your friends, and mark Darren’s post on social bookmarking and community websites. If the issue becomes big enough, it will help his efforts greatly. And most of all, do NOT buy this book!
Orphaned Works Bill returns
From Shawna Tenney on the Children’s Book Blog for Illustrators:
Calling for help from ALL ARTISTS!!
There is a bill called the Orphaned Works Bill that basically states that unless you register everything you’ve ever created within the past 34 years with multiple companies than your works will be considered orphaned and that means anyone can use them without your permission. Anyone can make money from your hard work except for you! And if someone else happens to register one of your works under their own name, then it suddenly becomes illegal for you to use your own work! THIS BILL LEGALIZES THEFT!! This is unbelievable.
This is very important. Every artist needs to know about this. Please pass this on to any artist or anyone who works in a creative field. This bill has not come out yet, so you can’t contact your legislature yet. But when it comes out, we will need help from every single artist.
Please educate yourself about this issue and do what you can to help put this bill to rest. Start by visiting the Illustrators Partnership of America’s website.
Other links:
I’ve had copyright issues with my artwork before, and I found these two stories to be especially disturbing. If you are a professional artist or seeking to be one, I urge you to keep up with issues like these and do what you can to support your industry. Protect your artwork and educate as many people as you can!
Entries (RSS)
April 21st, 2008 at 10:29 am
Regarding the stolen works in the book, that’s a real problem and I hope they get the pants sued off them.
The quoted description of the Orphan (not “Orphaned”) Works Bill reflects an incomplete understanding of the issue. The misinformation here does not help anybody, and I believe it reflects badly upon the artistic community.
It is believed that a modified version of the 2006 bill is going to be brought out soon–but as it has not been introduced, no one has even seen it yet. We don’t even know what it will say. There are some situations in which the 2006 bill would have offered protection for reasonable things, described in this post (http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html) which is well worth reading for a thorough understanding of the bill. The IPA’s articles thoroughly describe why the 2006 bill was bad, and why in all likelihood a modified bill in 2008 will still be bad.
The 2006 bill did NOT require registration of your works, nor did it attempt to “legalize theft.” Here (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.5439:) is the 2006 bill. It should be pointed out that the infringer must document a diligent search as well perform it; unless he has records proving he attempted to track down the artist (and in some cases, paid money to do so), the work is not considered an Orphan Work. Additionally, under the 2006 bill, a simple lack of identifying information on the work did not constitute a “reasonably diligent search,” and that work would not be an Orphan Work. Suit could be filed against an infringer, but the amount was limited to a reasonable rate, essentially the artist’s standard licensing fee, and the artist could not sue to collect attorney’s fees. The issue was not that the bill “legalized theft” but that it became economically unfeasible to file suit against the infringer. If this remains the case in a modified 2008 bill, THAT will be the reason to oppose it when and if it comes out.
Someone registering your work in their name at the Copyright Office will set them back around two grand in fines. There IS legal recourse for that, and unless you sign away your copyright, no one can make it illegal for you to use your own work. Digimarc and similar technologies make it possible to embed your copyright information into a file in a way that is invisible to the naked eye, but which can still be picked up by computers, which I would recommend doing regardless of whether a new bill passes. It makes it more difficult for infringers.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I have reading a lot about this myself the last couple of weeks and here is an article that I found that proved rather useful. Thought you would like to read it:
http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00264
April 25th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Thanks for the informative comment Kristin, and thanks Ashley for the additional link. I just read a blog post by Tom Richmond that also addresses the “Six Misconceptions” article. It is simple and well-written and also worth a read:
http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/?p=2029
April 25th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
The 2008 bill has just come out, and a press release has been posted here:
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200804/042408e.html
Okay, I’ve read a little more about the subject, and though I’m still far from an expert on the subject, I want to offer a little more insight:
Kristin, although Shawna’s original post was a bit sensational, I don’t think it was that far off the mark. Like she noted, it looks like the bill is going to strongly favor private registries and databases, because in order for the bill to work, the term “diligent search” has to be well defined. According to the press release, this “may include using Copyright Office records, private registries, industry practices and guidelines, technology tools, and electronic databases…”
No, a person cannot use an image simply because there’s no label on it, but if an infringer follows these guidelines and finds no records of the work in any registry or database, it IS legalizing him to use the work. He did the search - he documented it - it’s legal. This is scary because who’s to say a reasonable search is going to be enough for every piece of artwork out there.
Yes, technically you still own the copyright and if you find out about the infringement, you can fight it (I agree with you that legal compensation is one of the larger issues in this bill), but it doesn’t rid of the fact that the bill will give users an avenue to use the work freely and legally without your knowledge, where before it was protected just by existing.
Artists have to deal with people using their work without their knowledge with or without this bill, but at least today it’s good to know that law currently detracts most of those users, not giving them a way to work around it.