Advocacy

Daniel Barlow reports in the Rutland Herald that the US Senate passed the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act (S.2913); the vote took place September 26, 2008. An “orphan work” is any copyrighted work—book or other text, picture, music, recording, film, etc.—whose copyright owner cannot be identified or located. According to the bill’s author, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), orphan-works legislation in the House of Representative (H.R.5889) will most likely not be voted on until after the presidential election in November.

CAA is working hard to ensure that a final bill will include language that gives professional groups—including such associations as CAA, professional photographers organizations, and others—the ability to define appropriate guidelines for what constitutes a sufficient search for a copyright holder. This in turn will allow organizations like CAA to ensure that artists’ copyrights are protected.

Marybeth Peters, the register of copyrights at the US Copyright Office, released a statement on the eve of the vote explaining the need for orphan-works legislation. For several years, CAA has been actively involved orphan works. For other copyright issues, see the Intellectual Property and the Arts section of the CAA website.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the artist Kent Twitchell will receive $1.1 million from the settlement of a lawsuit against the United States government and eleven other defendants for painting over his six-story mural. entitled Ed Ruscha Monument and painted on the side of a downtown building owned by the federal government.

The settlement, disclosed April 30, 2008, is believed to be the largest awarded under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) or the California Art Preservation Act, both of which prohibit the desecration, alteration, or destruction of certain works of public art without giving ninety days’ notice to the artist to allow him or her the option of removing the artwork.

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The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Kahle v. Ashcroft, brought by Internet Archive and Open Content Alliance founders Brewster Kahle and Rick Prelinger in 2003, which challenged the constitutionality of the current copyright regime. Although not unexpected, the Supreme Court’s refusal comes after a recent ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals raised hopes of a review and lets stand the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection, effectively ending the case.

Read the full article in the Library Journal.