Every creative person should know the details of the Orphan Works legislation currently being considered by Congress.  The Graphic Artists Guild has provided the bills below to inform artists of all kinds about the status of the legislation as of July 1, 2008.  Updates will follow, so please be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed to get up-to-the-minute updates.

 

The Senate bill (S. 2913) has been approved and sent to the full Senate for approval.  The House bill (H.R. 5889) is still in the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee awaiting changes known as “markups.” 

 

In the event that the two branches pass differing versions of the law, the bills will be forwarded to a reconciliation committee.  The language of the two bills are consolidated and then presented to the President for final approval before becoming law.

 

The Guild has also included the Copyright Law of the United States.  This legislation was initiated as a single page more than 200 years ago and has grown to more than 300 pages during subsequent revisions.  Orphan Works legislation is clearly not the first challenge to the creative community, but the Guild has advocated for artists’ rights for the past 41 years and will continue to do so well into the future.

  

Click here for a copy of H.R. 5889  (Adobe Acrobat file, 71 Kb)

 

Click here for a copy of S. 2913  (Adobe Acrobat file, 44 Kb)

 

Click here for a copy of the Copyright Law of the United Sates (Adobe Acrobat file, 2908 Kb)