Open Hatch

On June 12, three leading textile trade associations announced their support for the Orphan Works bill.

Writing in Textile World, James A. Morrissey writes: “The legislation, which has cleared a House subcommittee, is supported by the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, the National Textile Association (NTA) and the Decorative Fabrics Association.”

Funny, that’s a 180 degree flip-flop from their House testimony of March 13, 2008. That day a spokesperson from the textile industry testified “on behalf of the hundreds of American companies” who are members of the same three trade groups. She denounced the bill, calling it “unconscionable for Congress to try to impose millions of dollars of costs on individual companies, many of which are small businesses…”

“The proposed orphan work legislation is not a solution to the ‘orphan works’ problem,” she testified. “Instead, it is a blueprint for a radically new copyright law. The inability to distinguish between abandoned copyrights and those whose owners are simply hard to find…is the Catch-22 of the Orphan Works project. This legislation would orphan millions of valuable copyrights that cannot otherwise be distinguished from true orphaned works – and that would open the door to commercial theft on an unprecedented scale.”

Strong testimony. So what happened? Did the bill improve? No, Congress just agreed to exempt textiles from the bill. So now Congress gets their endorsement.

Definition: When is cultural theft on an unprecedented scale not a problem?
Answer: When you’ve been cut out of the problem.

We hope legislators will judge the merit of such endorsements accordingly.

One last irony: the “strong testimony” quoted above was not original to the textile industry spokesperson. It was appropriated verbatim from Brad Holland’s 2006 Senate testimony and used without attribution or citation. You can read the original [here].

Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work
You can urge Congress to oppose these bills by linking here to a special letter.
Tell Your Senators and Representatives to Oppose the Orphan Works Act [here].

Please forward this message in its entirety to every artist you know.

My comments:

This is infuriating hypocrisy!

Now about the reply I got from Canon. My letter to him (which I now gather was vaguely scanned by an assistant and filed under “opposed”) specifically countered the oft-cited claim from supporters of the bill - that it supposedly does not endanger any managed copyrights because users of a work would have to perform a “good faith” search for the copyright holder. I went into it in my previous post on this - scan the post for the section of capital letter bullet points, it’s item E. Canon’s reply merely puppets what the drafters and supporters of the bill claim. He writes:

H.R. 5889, the “Orphan Works Act of 2008″ would limit the remedies of copyright infringement if the infringer using a work of art proves that he or she had performed a reasonably diligent search to identify and locate the owner of the copyright, but was unable to do so, or had provided accurate attribution to the author or owner if known. If proof cannot be obtained, then no limitations of remedies are available for the infringer and full copyright infringement penalties may apply.

This isn’t any kind of counterpoint - it’s exactly what my letter to him outlined is not a valid support for the bill (for the reasons I just gave here). His letter gets worse, too -

While it is obvious that the Copyright law needs updating, I simply cannot support a measure that targets or singles out a company such as satellite radio with the intention to shut down the industry as a whole by increasing its fees and negatively impacting its consumers. My position on the Judiciary Committee has given me the great opportunity to advocate technological advances while working to clarify copyright law. I will continue to work with my fellow members of Congress to resolve copyright issues in a way that addresses the interests of both the consumers and the copyright owners.

And that has what to do with the Orphan Works Act? Nothing! This is a typical political evasive non-response - but while Canon is puppeting the talking points of supporters, and he was after all on the committee approving the bill, it would appear he’s going to go right on supporting it - despite the fact that many people I know have written him to oppose it.

Canon mailed the same idiotic form reply to everyone I know who wrote him to oppose the bill.

When is it time to write President Bush and ask him to veto the bill if it crosses his desk? I’m thinking that time is now.