Oppose the Orphaned Works Act of 2008!

I won’t go into full detail of its evil here, as you can read and get the gist of it here: http://blamcast.net/articles/orphaned-works-open-source-copyright.

Essentially, it means any company can take a piece of software (among other things) and “claim” they looked for the author and then use it without obeying the GPL license on it. When the copyright holder sues on grounds of infringement, the people that violated the copyright merely have to provide “proof” that they looked for an author and could not locate one.

The only way to really prevent the infringement if the bill passes, is to register with some sort of copyright registry, which costs money no doubt.

Oppose it! You can go here: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/ to find out how to easily write your congressman/woman.

Syndicated 2008-07-05 17:05:05 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.