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10/25/08 - Brad Holland On Orphan Works Bill

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Renowned Illustrator and Founding Member of the Illustrator’s Partnership, Brad Holland joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable for an update and some insight about the recently passed, Orphan Works Bill that was "hotlined" through Senate earlier this month. ‘Orphan works’ is a term used to describe works where the owner of the copyright cannot be located. Brad has been instrumental in advocating the rights of artists and creatives, participating in congressional hearings, and is a true expert in copyright legistation. Brad explains some of the issues involved in registering your work commercially and details on what the new bill changes in comparison to what had been in place prior to the bill passing. This bill originated in early 2006, and was intended to help museums and libraries obtain the rights to use truly "orphaned works" of art of images. Unfortunately, the current state of the bill does that and much more. The bill is backed and was presented by the advocacy group "Public Knowledge", who maintains their side of the information at: http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/copyright

One of the key changes is that traditionally creative work was protected by ensuring there was a visible copyright symbol along with a year on any work that you wished to protect. This acknowledged that the work belonged to the originating artist for their lifetime plus 70 years. The new law changes this structure and requires that any work considered copyrighted has to be clearly identified and searchable in a central database registry. Brad and Gene discuss some examples of "Fair Use" and complete infringement and an artist’s ability to take legal action against infringement under the new bill.

Brad explains the impact on creatives and small businesses who under the new law are required to register all existing and future work. Due to the processing fees involved, Brad points out that today’s digital photographers, who shoot hundreds of images on average, could be expected to pay $250,000 to over $1,000,000 in filing fees if each image cost $1 to register. This is very cost prohibitive to the artists.

Gene seeks to find the benefits of this new bill, which at this point are very clouded and unclear. There are amendments proposed to be presented to the House in the next few weeks and all urged folks involved to take an active position by writing to your Congressman and local House Representatives expressing your concern for this revised copyright system. For additional resources and one-click links to write your position visit: http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/ or http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

For more information about Brad Holland visit his site at: http://www.bradholland.net

Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson joins us this week to follow-up on last week’s topic about Apple’s decision to stop offering the matte display on their new MacBooks. Jay explains some of the issues designers have in using a glossy vs. a matte screen and shares some tips on how to calibrate your glossy display. Jay indicates that the issue isn’t the display but in the manner in which they are backlit, in the case of the MacBooks it’s using LED technologies. Jay warns that not all of today’s popular monitor calibration tools are designed to properly manage these displays but there are some available that can optimize your display to your work environment.