Orphan Works Panel-Save the Date

Please don't let your artist friends starve

Drastic changes to U.S. Copyright Law were introduced last week under the guise of freeing up orphan works. Orphan Works are images whose creators can not be found. The bill (HR-5889 and S-2913) would allow the use of copyrighted works provided they performed a diligent search for the creator. Supporters argue that at long last they'll be able to digitally restore their grandparents wedding photos or that the public library can display photos of town from 100 years ago without worrying about being sued by the copyright holder should they come forward.

What these supporters fail to realize is that many of these scenarios are protected under the "Fair Use" provisions of current copyright law. So to remedy a percieved problem they have proposed a law that would threaten the livelihood of every freelance artist working today.

Under the provisons of this bill creatives would have to register work with yet to be created private registries in order to prevent their work from becoming orphaned. Now while that doesn't sound terrible on the surface it is worth noting that photographers and illustrators produce a significantly greater amount of work than any writer or recording artist. The time alone required to register every drawing, sketch, painting and photograph would be prohibitive. Also, because these registries would be run by private companies, not the government, it is going to cost an artist money to register each image. Even if this fee is nominal, say in the range of $10, the cost of registering work could easily exceed $10,000 in one year. Furthermore, if there were multiple competing registries artist would be compelled to register their work with more than one, possibly all, of these companies. The cost of protecting the copyrights could easily exceed the annual income of many artists.

When introducing the Senate version of the bill, Sen. Leahy of Vermont claimed that this bill would not drastically alter current copyright law, that this would not be a rights giveaway. He claimed that only those performing a thorough search would be able to use Orphan Works. But what exactly constitutes a thorough search? Would a search of 2 or 3 registries be sufficient? An artist who registered their work with a competing registry would now have orphaned his work, despite his best efforts to follow the law and protect his work. How would the search work? Would it be a keyword search? Would it be similar to a Google Image Search? Anyone who has every used a search engine knows that overloading it with keyword makes it otherwise useless. And what would is to stop unscrupulous users of orphan works for diligently searching for the creators of works in places they know will lead them to dead ends? What would stop someone intent on stealing images from spamming or calling in the middle of the night to make sure calls to the artist went unanswered? In my experience, as an illustrator of little consequence, I have received many inquiries about creating work for free. If this bill were passed I would be forced not only to respond to each of these ridiculous requests, but keep track of them as well. Without clearly defining what a thorough search is artists everywhere will be at the mercy of publishers intent on exploiting work created by others.

Another feature of this bill that represents a radical departure from current copyright law is what happens when someone uses copyrighted material without permission. If this legislation passes those who illegally use a copyrighted work would have to pay the copyright holder only a reasonable license fee. Under the current law copyright infringers are responsible for not only paying a license fee, but are also liable for statutory damages and the copyright holders legal fees. Many artists are able to hire lawyers on contingency in copyright lawsuits because they will eventually be able to recover legal fees once the infringement is proven. This bill would render the fight for rights far more expensive than any potential award. Of course, this assumes that artists would devote the time and financial resources to fight for the rights of their work in a court of law. Most presumably, would not.

While the idea of freeing up work for use by public and educational institutions sounds noble, it is only a cover for allowing large corporations to profit from registries and steal copyrighted work with little consequence. The goals that supporters mention could easily be accomplished with legislation addressing and clarifying the Fair Use of provisions of the current law rather than crafting a law that represents radical departure from current copyright law.

If this bill becomes law, copyrights will be meaningless.

Now while this may not seem like a big deal to most people, copyrights are an essential part of any artists business. It is the copyright that prevents others from exploiting our work and profiting while we starve. If people are free to take the work of artists then in time there will be very few artists working in this country. Why would anyone be encouraged to draw, paint, sculpt, photograph or write if there were no chance to make a decent living with these incredibly rare skills?

In 2006 a similar measure was defeated. Let's hope history repeats itself. Please contact your elected officials in Washington and tell them to vote against this Orphan Works Act.

Far more information on this subject is available here and here.

(The image above is © John W. Tomac, 2008. All Rights Reserved. It is not an orphaned work of art.)

Putting a smile on your customer's faces

Over the past few months I've had the opportunity to work with art director David Waugh on a pair of assignments for ChannelPro Magazine. ChannelPro is a trade publication for Information Technology professionals servicing small and mid size businesses. Coincidentally, some of my friends from my days at RIT are now IT professionals.

Information Technology can be a pretty dry subject. Working with Dave is great because he tends to favor getting away from the literal and pushing the conceptual side of art. The image above was created for a feature on custome service. The spread can be seen on page 16 of this online edition of the magazine.

Below is another ChannelPro assignment. This was for a story on how the devices that keep us connected often make it more difficult to get things done. The spread can be seen online, on page 14.

A shameless plug for a friend's business venture

This is a logo I created for my good friend Blaine Moore, who runs a blog called Run to Win, that covers the world of running and track and field in addition to offering advice to runners of all ability levels. For the past few months Blaine has been working on a more comprehensive marathon training guide which is now available at marathoning.org. It is definitely worth a read if you are a runner preparing for your first marathon or looking to improve upon your previous best.

I know first hand that Blaine is quite knowledgeable on the subject he is writing about. We were teammates on the Rochester Institute of Technology's cross country and track teams. Shortly before graduating, Blaine started running marathons. Now his goal is to run one in every state in the union. To accomplish that goal, he's running at least two or three a year and has been for the past few years. In 2006, I joined him as he crossed New York off his list. It was my first marathon and his 9th. Needless to say he beat me that day by about three minutes. (His 2 hours and 51 minutes to my 2 hours and 54 minutes.)



Here we are around mile 8 of the New York City Marathon. Blaine is on the left, I'm waving at the camera.

Seeing Spots

Over the past few months I've done some work for FOLIO, a trade magazine about magazine publishing. I've worked with, Art Director, Dan Trombetto, who is a very easy person to work with. All of the assignments have been spots for a recurring section at the front of the magazine called Login.

The most recently published was for an article on website architecture.



Originally Dan and his editors pitched a Rubik's cube image with different labels on the individual squares.





When it was decided that these might not reproduce well at a 5"x 5" size I suggested using a Soma cube in its place. Since it retained the puzzle solving concept, but also incorporated building something. Below are some initial sketches.







Below is another spot that ran with a story on publishers predicting trends for 2008. They wanted something that said fortune teller without looking "too tacky" I ended up producing this image based on a palm reading chart.



These sketches were rejected



This assignment was for social networking websites. The only requirements were show a crowd and computer. I created this.


And here are some of the rejects.

Fun facts about the George Washington Bridge

Most mornings I awake to Maurice DuBois and Kate Sullivan on the Channel 2 morning news. As they cut to commercial, viewers are treated to live shots of New York City's landmarks in the pre-dawn light. One that usually catches my eye is the George Washington Bridge, which inspired this image.



And now for the fun facts:

Spanning the Hudson River, The George Washington Bridge connects Fort Lee, N.J. and Washington Heights in Manhattan. It opened to traffic in October 1931. At the time it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. The original design called for the towers to be encased in granite. However, the Great Depression put the brakes on those plans. In 1962 the lower deck was added at a cost far greater than the construction of the rest of the bridge.

On holiday the bridge is home to the world's largest free-flying American flag

Entering New Jersey is free, but if you want to leave be prepared to shell out $6. In March those departing the Garden State for the City of New York will be forced to shell out a few dollars more

The back alleys of the Internet

The Record's travel editor, Jill Schensul, recieved an e-mail with the subject line "We'll pay you to travel anywhere". Rather than delete it like any other ordinary piece of spam, she decided to read it and attempt to get paid to travel anywhere. She didn't get paid, nor did she get to travel anywhere. However, she did end up receiving a lot more spam and recieved a few suspicious charges on her credit card. This story ran Dec. 23. Originally the story was supposed to run on the front page. It ended up getting kicked inside, but this illustration, originally slated to run with it, stayed out front as a giant, quarter page teaser to the text.
The end result isn't terrible, but yet nowhere near as cool as Linzie Hunter's series of spam subject line paintings.