TAKE DOWN THE ORPHAN WORKS BILL

a bill is going through the house RIGHT NOW that threatens the work of all American Artists, no matter if they are photographers, painters, illustrators, writers, or composers. It doesn't matter if you are an artist yourself - if you read the newspaper, watch TV, or consume any type of media at all, this should matter to you!

Imagine if you drew a piece of art and published it. A few weeks later, some company steals it to use in their own ads, without attributing the art to you or rightly compensating you for it. When you contact them about it, they say that they "made a reasonable effort" to contact you and you have almost no legal recourse against them. With this HR 5439, THIS COULD HAPPEN TO ARTISTS EVERY DAY.

the ORPHAN WORKS ACT (HR 5439) makes it easy for people to steal the original work of artists by allowing them just to say that they made a "reasonable effort" to contact the original artist and after that it would be considered an "abandoned work."

WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN (well, FAX them):

contacting them:
http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00175
http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2006/orphan_tools.php

target members + model letter:
http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2006/orphan_update.php

Cagle has a lot about it on his blog but he doesn't have permalinks so you may have to dig depending on the time when you read this:
http://www.cagle.com/news/blog/

an example of what it would do:
http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00235