The year is winding down and so is this Congressional session. Megan Gray, the Guild’s lobbyist, continued having meetings with key House and Senate offices and the different industries and associations that are part of the long list of Orphan Works stakeholders. These meetings continued our efforts to advocate on behalf of artists’ interests and to educate key people about the graphic arts industry and its vital role in the US economy.
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We all know that the Senate version of the bill, which the Guild opposed, passed in September, but we were able to block the passage of that version in the House because of our insistence on a Notice of Use clause and the strategic decision on our part to back the House version based on the Notice of Use clause. We know that not everyone understands that decision, but if we had not done that, the Senate bill would have likely swept through the House with as little opposition as it encountered in the Senate itself.
As this session of Congress wound down, the House bill seemed to have stalled. The reasons for this are varied, including a preoccupation with the economic crisis the country is facing, and the fact that two other key stakeholders, both of whom are strongly in favor of the basic contours of the bill as it stands, have recently butted heads over a provision in the bill that doesn’t really affect visual artists one way or another. At the moment, this works in our favor. Read the rest of this entry »
