If copyright infringement is the poison, copyright registry is the contamination.

I know that many people are confused when it comes to copyright and FUD is thrown around like monkeys poo in many debates around the web, but everyone does seem to agree to stick to the US version of copyright when talking about it all over the world. If you're doing that, please keep yourself up to date. Recently, Burns Auto parts spots APA has posted about a new “registry” for copyrighted works which looks like it's created for the sole purpose of sneakily nicking the rights to selling your work. With the shady domain name c-registry.us contract says that the site’s owners get to do your fee negotiating with any users of your content that you put on the site. In other words, stay the hell away from it.

c-registry.us also talk a lot about the orphan works act - you know, the bill that got killed. Sure it was up in the Senate but with the $700 billion Wall Street rescue issue, the House was busy and the bill was dead on arrival. Repeat after me: There is no orphan works act.

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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morphoto's picture

While there is no Orphan Works Act in place yet, by most accounts from people in the know there will be one in our lifetime. And when OW does pass there should already be a process in place to mitigate some of the damage that such a bill may exert on image creators. Why close the door after the horse has left the barn. Even absent any OW bill this service and others similar to it have value in tracking image use for creators and potential income from exercising ownership rights. Has anyone who is posting on this subject actually tried the service to see if it has value to them? ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) has been working with the creators of C-Registy to modify the language that may be objectionable to image creators which they are very amenable to modifying and I know for a fact that they have good intentions and the highest integrity. When the blogosphere gets ahold of something, it's like the child's game of telephone only a billion times worse, distortion to the max.

Paul Morris
Miami, Florida

Neaner's picture

Will there be? How will the Orphan works act, uhm, work, when it comes to images that are Asian, African or European? (Or for that matter, Canadian)

Dabitch's picture

Both good comments which kicked my tush to post a follow-up here;

Copyright registry changes its terms, but will it ever really be needed?