A Letter I Sent to My Senators and Representative This Morning
I don’t know if you’ve heard about the Orphan Works Act. Ruined Art has a wonderful, in depth blog post about this lousy idea. I am not someone who joins petitions and emails my representatives so often I’m on a first name basis, but if this act passes, it has the potential to destroy the art world. I’ve been working on my little rant and this is what I sent off this morning to my legislators:
I am writing about the Orphan Works Act. This act is about as ethical and fair as someone deciding that my child is an orphan because he or she “discovered” my child in his classroom at school without me present. I shouldn’t have to register every piece of art I make and every photo I take with three different agencies for a fee just to protect it from what will be “legal theft” if this act passes and then fight them for my own copyright back if they miss the fact that I did register.
And then there is the matter of the cost involved. I make a few hundred dollars a year after tons of hard work, time spent networking and materials. People call us starving artists for a reason!
If this act passes, it won’t just be a cute saying. Artists really will starve if they make art and don’t have a right to sell their own pieces because one of the big businesses pushing this act has claimed them as orphans. So, they will go to work at a 9 to 5 job and the arts will disappear. Can you imagine a world where artistic expression stopped in the 21st century? I can and I don’t want to live in a world like that.
Please say no to the Orphan Works Act.
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