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I read over that list and it sounds like barely anything, if anything, is changing. It sounds another control freak artist trying to put a scary spin on this because Heaven forbid art be anything other than a means to get them and them alone fame and fortune.
An “orphan work” is “a copyright protected work for which rightsholders are positively indeterminate or uncontactable”. According to what I’m reading about this new law, under the current law “anyone using an orphan work runs the risk that the copyright owner may step forward and bring an infringement action for substantial damages, attorneys’ fees, and/or injuctive relief unless specific exception or limitation to copyright applies”. Even if you acted in “good faith” (i.e., made an attempt to contact the copyright holder), the copyright holder could just pop up years later and sue you if it’s not officially in the public domain yet.
Or, y’know, your YouTube video might get DMCA’d by a copyright patrol bot.
Because people can get sued/DMCA’d/C&D’d/etc. just for using a thing that’s been “orphaned”, orphan works are problematic. For example, take public libraries. There are all these old books, anyone can read them for free. But if someone owning an orphan work pops up and demands that their book not be available for free in libraries, then there’s complications.
The original post is full deliberate cherry-picking and convenient half-truths. The only people who really benefit from orphan works are corporations. Take a look at how video game companies are reselling old games on the digital market. If the Orphan Works Act had been passed years earlier, all those games might very well be subject to public domain. Of course, as SOPA and ACTA proved, everyone hates copyright laws when they clearly benefit Big Business, so corporations spread this idea that “artists” are the ones that lose out here. Tumblr’s full of gullible control freaks, so naturally they took the bait.
From Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution:
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
Copyright holders do not have absolute control over their works (all you fan artists would get C&D’d left and right if that were true) and they do not get to hold on to their copyright forever. The only thing the Orphan Works Act actually does is put a tighter restriction on how long you can abandon a work before it goes into the public domain.
I recommend everyone read this thing here about orphan works, specifically “Consquences of Orphan Works”.