MightyFunk

I didn’t sign up for the ASAI (Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Archi­tec­tural Illus­tra­tors) to be spam mailed. How­ever, when I got my first email from them today, I thought some­thing must have been wrong. I checked my email begrudg­ingly, and went to the link they provided.

Much to my com­plete and utter amaze­ment, leg­is­la­tors are try­ing to pass a bill called the ‘Orphan Works Bill’ that will tear down the walls of copy­righted works. For those that don’t under­stand how copy­rights work, basi­cally any form of art­work that you cre­ate is auto­mat­i­cally copy­righted under law. This pro­tects an artist to a degree from hav­ing their work stolen and resold. In a loose sense, it is a ‘lesser’ form of patent — one that doesn’t require tons of paper­work, time, and legal fees.

The bill that is pro­posed will require artists to mark all their works from now on — which essen­tially means adding water­marks to every­thing you see on the Inter­net. It’s pos­si­bly one of the most obnox­ious bills I’ve seen on paper, and it must be stopped unless you like look­ing at water­marked images, hav­ing some­one steal the music that you may have cre­ated, jack­ing your writ­ings, or sim­ply don’t mind if some­one (or any­one for that mat­ter) grabs your photographs.

If you have a moment, please take a look at the link below and peti­tion the gov­ern­ment to stop this bill from get­ting passed:

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/