Very rarely does a bill in Congress necessitate my protests. I generally pay attention to what is happening in politics, but most of the bills do not concern me.

This bill concerns me.

You can read the body of the bill here (It's a PDF file, and requires Adobe Acrobat). You can read how it impacts me as a writer and some of you as writers and artists here and here and here.

Here's the lowdown as I understand it. Under current copyright law, an "orphaned work" is considered a work with no copyright because the copyright has either expired or is in some other way no longer active. However, under the law right now, any creative work is immediately copyrighted upon creation, whether or not it is actually registered with the copyright office.

Under this new amendment, works have the potential to become "orphaned" from the moment they are created. Infringers are required by this new law to conduct a search "in good faith" for the creator of any work they find online. And many artists already put semi-transparent "watermarks" on their art. The problem is this:

Artists don't like to put giant watermarks all the way across their image, because it is distracting to the viewer. Most watermarks are small, relegated to one corner of the image. If someone wanted to, they could crop the image to get rid of the watermark and use it as they pleased, claiming that since there was no identification on the image and since they couldn't find it in the copyright database (which they probably wouldn't, because it costs money to register), it is an "orphaned work" and they can do whatever they want with it.

Please, if you are at all concerned with maintaining your intellectual property under current copyright law, please write to your representative and your senators. Both of them! Make copies of the letter and send it multiple times! Get your parents to write in even if they don't care! Just PLEASE stop this bill from passing.

I'm starting a petition, the text of which is located below. You can sign it here.

We the undersigned do strongly protest the introduction of HR 5439, also known as "The Orphan Works Act of 2006." This bill, while it may initially seem to protect citizens from excessive suit by a copyright holder, greatly infringes upon the creative rights of artists, writers and musicians in the United States.

Under current copyright law, a work is considered to be copyright immediately upon creation, and is the intellectual property of the creator. Under the new law, a work would be considered "orphaned" immediately upon creation and would not be considered copyrighted until it was registered at the copyright office for a fee of $30.

While thirty dollars may seem to many like an insignificant cost, there are many artists (the phrase "artists" will hereon be made to mean any creator of a work of literature, art or music) who could not afford to register every one of their works. If the Congress will consider that many freelance artists make no more than $10 a work, it will understand that a law such as this would cripple the freelance art industry.

Freelance artists depend on the uniqueness of their work in order to make money. Consider that under the new Orphan Works bill, an infringer would be able to modify a work in so simple a way as to not change the main body of the work and still have the work be legally considered "derivative" and therefore ineligible for prosecution under the law. The freelance artists would no longer be able to do business.

In light of these severe problems, we strongly urge the Congress to vote down HR 5439, the Orphan Works Bill of 2006. We are both registered voters and non-voters, however, we are all concerned with preserving the integrity of America's artists and their intellectual property.