[NetBehaviour] Fwd: Mickey Mouse Bill

[bob catchpole]

Rob Myers wrote:

> Registration only affects damages where copyright is infringed.

So if someone uses your work without permission and you haven't registered you're not entitled to damages. ONLY in the States. Why not come into line with the rest of the world? Just get rid of the need (and expense, $30 a time) to register. 

Currently many working photographers in America are compelled to do the same as Seth Resnick: "Every image that I shoot is registered before it ever leaves my office." To us outside the States this seems ludicrous - time-consuming, expensive and a perversion of an automatic universal right. And in the Land of the Free!...

> The purpose behind the “visual registries” provisions is to help artists keep 
> ownership information associated with their works...

To help artists? Artists are automatically owners of their work. Nowhere else do they need to register the fact.

Bob



----- Original Message ----
From: Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org>
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <netbehaviour at netbehaviour.org>
Sent: Saturday, 17 May, 2008 9:06:03 PM
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Fwd: Mickey Mouse Bill

bob catchpole wrote:

> My real point, which you don't address,  is that copyright is a
> universal, automatic right. ONLY in the States it means nothing if you 
> don't register. 

In the US, copyright means that you can stop people copying your work 
without permission. It is quite literally the right to control copies.

Registration only affects damages where copyright is infringed.

> Instead of ending the fiasco and coming into line with 
> the rest of the world, the Orphan Works Bill proposes even more
> registration. 

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1561

"MYTH: The bills would mandate registration of all visual arts in 
expensive, private registries.

FACT: Neither bill contains such a mandate. Owners’ failure to register 
would not absolve users of their search obligations. The purpose behind 
the “visual registries” provisions is to help artists keep ownership 
information associated with their works and to help users find owners. 
In order to achieve this purpose, the bills contemplate the development 
of electronic databases of visual works in the market place. However, 
these registries do not have to be expensive. The bills do not require 
artists to use these services, nor do they require the services to 
charge a registration fee. Services that operate in the current 
marketplace, and provide services free of cost, could easily evolve into 
the visual registries contemplated by the bills. The bottom line is that 
the bills aim to encourage the market to solve a problem to help owners 
be found, but the bills do not require owners to register with these 
services."

- Rob.
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