So, if Orphaned Works passes...

[J Wilson]

... and it unfortunately looks like it is going to at this point, what can we do to protect ourselves without going to that worst case scenario?

One thought I had was, if it comes down to those friggen registries, registering my logo/signature. If the registries image recognition software is sophisticated enough, shouldn't it recognize my logo on ANY piece of art, meaning that I could get away with registering only that, and not every piece of art I do? Since my logo/signature ends up on every finished work I do (and soon every sketch I post on the net as well) shouldn't that alone come up as a postive hit if registered in every registry that pops up? I'd think registering one image multiple times is a somewhat reasonable approach given the options were likely left with.

The only down side is signatures tend to be used in an out of the way corner so as not to distract from the image. This means they sometimes get cropped out in publication, or they would be easy to crop out by someone looking to orphan my work.

Sigh, this is so depressing.

[Justin.]

Do the comic artist thing; hide it in the details. First artist I can think of is Cheeks-74 (where is sean btw?) but hundreds of artists do this.

[J Wilson]

It's an idea I've thought of, but if it's "hidden" then there's the chance a possible "user"/infringer won't find it, and then it's as good as orphaned anyways, or you are right back to needing to register everything.

[MWoerner]

Also, for those of you considering formal registration with the Copyright Office to have the option of statutory damages, here's a neat loophole you can use. Unpublished works can be registered as a collection, as many works in the collection as you want, in a single filing, for one filing fee of $35. Since merely putting your artwork up for display on the Interwebs doesn't constitute "publication", you could register "All My Artwork From The Last Ten Years" as an unpublished collection for a whole $35, and sue the pants off anyone who infringes anything in that collection. (This would also be a fun way to test whether the Copyright Office considers works displayed on the net to be unpublished. If you try this out, do let me know!)

Source: http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html

This blog entry doesn't express my personal opinion on the whole orphan works bill issue, i still think it's a steaming heap of bull....

cheers

[J Wilson]

Source: http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html

This blog entry doesn't express my personal opinion on the whole orphan works bill issue, i still think it's a steaming heap of bull....

cheers

The problem I believe is that the orphaned works bill doesn't CARE if the work is protected. All it seems to care about is A) Could I FIND the copyright holder? B) If "no", then there is a cap on damages to being ONLY what two willing parties would have agreed on (which also ignores that you might NOT have been willing in the first place. It doesn't care about YOU, only the user.)

[aesir]

I know one of the cgtalk admins was talking about possibly setting up the website where every image you post is automatically registered as well somehow.

Could be something we do here too.

In the end, maybe we just stop posting are stuff on the net so much...

[J Wilson]

I can't help but wonder if this isn't a wake up call for illustrators to form some sort of guild for self preservation. I mean if screen writers and actors have a guild, why not illustration? Or is our client based so fragmented it would be worthless?

[jadefoodog]

post in low resolution and dont post important things you really care about . i dont trust this registry thing either

[Duq]

Use the meta data for any image you release to the internet.

Basicly in photoshop, file>file info.

If anyone tries to change the information with an editor or whatever the file wont work anymore. There are ofcourse tools to change this, like photoshop, But if people are genuinly trying to find you, and not abuse your work, you can leave this information in any image you release.

[FlipMcgee]

Registration doesn't really work or protect your art on the net.

So you pay $35-45 to copyright and have proof of ownership, but what if you're dealing with multiple scammers/thieves/fake book publishers outside the jurisdiction of your country's laws? And...you get exploited every month, every year. Unthinkable? Happens all the time on ebay, myspace, obscure forums with a buy and sell section.

How can the copyright office stop these individuals (as opposed to a bigger more well know mega-corp)? You have to pay lawyers to work on your case, you have to pay lawyers to get whatever compensation you can get. Do you have funds for your legal fees everytime somebody rips you off? Do you have time to deal with this?

Watermark or not, signed or not, low res or not, it doesn't really matter. For example, t-shirt ripoff artists don't really need your low res jpegs to copy your art or concept. If they have Illustrator, they can just vector trace your shit and comfortably upres that to print quality. That recent fake book scenario where I believe the scammers even left the credits on some of the pieces in there. When the real owners contacted the booksellers in Europe the booksellers still left the hundred dollar books on their bookshelves.

[Blue]

I've already made the transition from digital to traditional. Although it saddens me to no end, I already spent the last few days erecting a 4ft x 6ft canvas. Now just have to prime it and get painting.

Kinda like the small of paint but... in Painter IX i created a brush so perfect...it saddens me to think about.

I mean, what can i do? I would need to make a website that did a few things:
1) Have a 1x1 clear .gif stretched over the whole page as a floating object to prevent the old fashioned drag & drop.
2) Watermark EVERYTHING
3) Add a script which causes images to go full white if a screen cap command is hit.
4) Maybe more covert ops kind of things on top of this.

And you know the end result? A heaping pile a shit. I loved keeping great .jpgs on my hard-drive for inspiration and I'm sure someone has some of my stuff in their archives for the same. That won't be possible anymore. The whole fucking internet is going to SUCK.

[Blue]

I can't help but wonder if this isn't a wake up call for illustrators to form some sort of guild for self preservation. I mean if screen writers and actors have a guild, why not illustration? Or is our client based so fragmented it would be worthless?

Graphic Artist's Guild & The Illustrator's partnership

But neither hold the power the writer's guild does.

[robertoortiz]

Source: http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html

This blog entry doesn't express my personal opinion on the whole orphan works bill issue, i still think it's a steaming heap of bull....

cheers

Please read

HER RECENT POSTS?

http://maradydd.livejournal.com/377047.html


She has not updated THAT OLD POST and it is doing a LOT of damage.


And BTW


BRAD HOLLAND replies to Radio Free Meredith's - Six Misconceptions About Orphaned Works


I read a column by a woman (forgot the name unfortunately) that supposedly debunks the entirety of the Orphan Works fears.


You may be referring to “Six Misconceptions About Orphan Works,” which was written before these bills came out and which we responded to at the time. Our response is archived here:

http://www.illustratorspartnership.o...archterm=00264


Her “column” argued that there were no orphan works bills in the works (the bills came out a few days later, as we had predicted) and she tried to “debunk” our warnings by citing current copyright law, which, of course, these bills are intended to change. It was not a well-informed article.

Thank you for following this issue and for writing to congress. Unfortunately things are moving fast there, and it’s going to take a real effort to stop them. We may be asking everyone to write again soon – this time to support an amendment limiting the application of orphan works law to orphan works.

Kind regards,

Brad Holland

[Blue]

Thanks for popping over from CGTalk Roberto and keeping us up to date.

[FlipMcgee]

I think what freelancers and limited budget indie artists need instead of a government sanctioned or administered registrar is something like an equivalent to an antivirus type of service.

Symantec for example work 24/7 to search for threats and offer patches to customers worldwide. If there's a service like that where the company scans the internet (especially art market sites) in whatever languages that's out there for unauthorized art sales or publication, has legal representation across the globe, and only charges you pennies per month (since they're a million subscribers worth) then I'd be very amenable to signing up for that.

This won't stop the stealing but at least there's an ongoing service that hunts for scammers and effectively deals with them with specialist lawyers that would otherwise be hard to find or hire.

[Blue]

Flip, from a financial standpoint that wouldn't be worthwhile to invest in. Hundred of millions of people use anti-virus software and only a few million would consider using the software you hypothesized, and that software would be more expensive and complex then anti-virus.

Sadly...

[FlipMcgee]

Software? What software?

Internet browsers are free, far as I know.

I'm talking about a service here.

[Blue]

Software? What software?

Internet browsers are free, far as I know.

I'm talking about a service here.

Well the 'service' would have to be software run. Even if run by a massive super computer, it still needs to be written since manually searching the entire world for every piece of art registered.. well you know what I mean.

[FlipMcgee]

I'm not thinking that hi-tech. Maybe possible someday.

You just need people who can surf their native language art sites, forums, blogs, online bookstores, etc. and see if there's scamming going on (verify anyway if the art is legit via ISBN, confirmation from artists that they've granted rights, etc.). Of course they'll need to familiarize themselves with their subscribers' art styles or works.

This system won't be perfect and I'm not expecting a 100% eyeball scan but I think it's more efficient than random sightings by other forum or blog regulars that were seeing now. Where the scam is revealed months after the offenders have already made their shit loads of money. Scammers usually ply their ill gotten stuff on established internet markets or channels anyway. So you could have just a group regularly checking on those online shops or big forums.

A hypothethical pro-artist service like this versus a copyright office that just takes your fee, just gives you your proof of ownership certificate whatever, and leaves it up to you alown to fight your battle(s). I don't think it's a bad idea.

[dusty imp]

Speaking of which, I was just checking goodbrush.com to see if it recovered from getting hacked. Sure enough it works, except now there are only 24 images on it. I wonder if Craig finally got too tired of all the assholes who were giving low ratings to every piece there and now getting hacked, or if it has something to do with this orphans works business.

[MWoerner]

robertoortiz, thanks for correcting.

I didn't want to share false or outdated information at any time whatsoever.

I still have a tough time understanding the whole complexity of this situation especially its consequences outside the U.S.

[Kezrek]

The fact that we're even being forced to protect ourselves to this extent is just... ridiculous.

Although using watermarks is all nice and such, I think if this orphaned works act is enacted, it would certainly bite its supporters in the butt if we all stopped drawing. Like an artistic strike. THAT would get attention. (Just speculating, though)

[Blue]

The fact that we're even being forced to protect ourselves to this extent is just... ridiculous.

Although using watermarks is all nice and such, I think if this orphaned works act is enacted, it would certainly bite its supporters in the butt if we all stopped drawing. Like an artistic strike. THAT would get attention. (Just speculating, though)

I think we might see a realistic push away from digital with this. Everyone will do traditional for 'personal' work or for fun (or at the very least keep personal work offline), and anything digital will be for work purposes only... to guarantee full protection.

Well, I enjoyed the world of the future while it was here. The middle ages sounds like it'll be quite a ride.

[VulgarDragon]

Isn't there some way to program your website to prevent people from ripping off pictures? I know of a website where, if you tried to right-click on a picture to save it, a pop-up comes up and asks "What are you doing? Don't steal the images!" I think that it will take some programming skill to make it hard for people to rip images off your website.

If that bill passes, I'm going to have to hunt down and remove anything on internet worth saving....this makes me sad. Yep, end of free internet.

[Anid Maro]

Isn't there some way to program your website to prevent people from ripping off pictures? I know of a website where, if you tried to right-click on a picture to save it, a pop-up comes up and asks "What are you doing? Don't steal the images!"...

Nope, can't prevent it.

You can make it annoying and perhaps frustrating to save images, but you can't stop it. Hell, by nature of how the internet works every time someone views your pictures they get downloaded into their internet cache. If they're even moderately tech savvy then they'll know to pillage their cache for your images rather than try to right click and save them.

The only way to prevent your images from being stolen is to never post them. Ever. That goes for post Orphan Works (if it passes) as well as the present in the case of international theft.

[Pavel Sokov]

The worst thing is this is passed in the US, but that doesnt stop people from the Us grabbing works of people everywhere else in the world, so everyone one earth has to defend themselves now on art forums.


I got an email today saying that it passed on may 15, yestarday. not sure if that is true or not though

[Kezrek]

The worst thing is this is passed in the US, but that doesnt stop people from the Us grabbing works of people everywhere else in the world, so everyone one earth has to defend themselves now on art forums.


I got an email today saying that it passed on may 15, yestarday. not sure if that is true or not though

I don't think it was... This website says it's still in there.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-5889

[Izi]

I'm freaking out.

[Costau D]

This bill has a long way to go. Bills are presented constantly, and it is usually rare when any of them are passed. Fight it, but don't panic.

[Izi]

Okay

If bills really walked around and talked like that I would beat this bill with broken bottles and crowbars.