Point & Glick

I’m a mem­ber of Con​cep​tArt​.org. As an ama­teur artist, I found the forums to be incred­i­bly help­ful and the found­ing mem­bers to be gen­uinely inter­ested in cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that sup­ports and fos­ters the artis­tic growth of its mem­bers.
I received an email from the founder, Jason Man­ley, in which he describes his con­cerns with the Orphan Bill. (Links to the USCO and the actual Bill.)
For any­one who hasn’t been fol­low­ing it, the Orphan Works Bill is pro­posed leg­is­la­tion that attempts to deal with the “Orphan works” all over the inter­net. Almost any image that you received in a mass for­ward email whose ori­gin can be traced to 4chan is, in all like­li­hood, an orphan work. The bill pro­poses to require any­one who wants to use an image he or she has found to per­form a “rea­son­ably dili­gent” search for the copy­right holder — in most cases the artist.
The prob­lem that Jason raises is that com­pa­nies will begin to cre­ate paid reg­istries that artists will have to uti­lize to insure that their works are search­able. Jason raises the issue and intro­duces a semi-solution in his email:

Artists hav­ing to pay to be in search­able reg­istries is poten­tial prob­lem num­ber one. I believe this will be left to the pri­vate com­pa­nies based on my research into who is sup­port­ing this hor­ri­ble bill and what busi­nesses are open­ing prepar­ing for it. I went in and checked the domain reg­istry to search to see if peo­ple were buy­ing the domains (reg​is​termyart​.com, artreg​istry​.com, etc..etc…) and every one I searched was gone. This was the red flag that began the real push to solve this assault on artist rights. The cor­po­rate sharks are already prepar­ing to feed it seems.

Since the busi­ness world reads the laws and tries to cap­i­tal­ize on the loop­holes, it is obvi­ous to me that this would hap­pen. Money is already flow­ing that direc­tion. My guess is the art reg­istries will launch as soon as the law passes or shortly there­after, unless some mir­a­cle hap­pens. Smart bug­gers but not smart enough. Imag­ine the pho­tog­ra­phers who take five hun­dred images a day or more…ugh. Artists can­not pay for this service…at least those I know who pro­duce quan­ti­ties of work…and none should have to.
Any­way, that prob­lem is now solved in low tech fash­ion here: http://​www​.con​cep​tart​.org/​s​e​a​rch. Con​cep​tArt​.Org has cre­ated a search sys­tem for locat­ing art and artists, essen­tially cut­ting off the paid reg­istry indus­try before they can even get off the ground. Click the images and find the orig­i­nal thread. Click the artist name and con­tact them directly. This also keeps these ready­ing com­pa­nies from act­ing as mid­dle­men, between the searcher and the artist who they wish to hire. There is no room for that in our business.

While not per­fect, it is cer­tainly well-meaning and extremely use­ful for artists. The forums are already an excel­lent, usu­ally pro­fes­sional envi­ron­ment to both por­tray you work and to find help — this increases their worth.