Snape

Warmup sketch from this morning.

Studies for a cover I'm working on.

I was just curious to know what this would look like. I took the "Rutger and Mothball" image from the last book, and tried cutting it up and building a little set. This is totally, cheap, with just printer paper and straws to hold them up. I think if I were ever to use this I would have to get thick paper and balsa wood to build the thing. But, fun anyway.

Some sketchbook goofs.

Some figure drawing goofs from this week.








Feeling a little guilty for not posting more often *_*

The Orphaned Works Bill
Little orphans floating in space...



There is a lot of hoop-la going on around this bill, some of it over-reacting, some of it not.
The biggest issue with this bill is that it provides you with absolutely no advantages to our current state. I've read through it and all I can see that it does is make a window for artwork that has no signature for it to be useable.
The biggest reason not to support this bill: it it does not help you get fair compensation beyond what the law already allows, it opens windows of opportunity for financial loss, and it requires that you spend more time and money to have the same benefits you already enjoy.

Read the very first sentence of the bill, Page 1:

"To provide limitation of provide judicial remedies in copyright cases involving orphaned works."

What this means, is the entire purpose of this bill is to limit how much an artist/photographer/creative can sue for in the event that his work is infringed.

Two versions of the bill:
(I recommend you read this one)
The Senate's Version: http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan/The_Shawn_Bentley_Orphan_Works_Act_of_2008.pdf
The Public Version: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:1:./temp/~c110XeVy6F:e779:

Right now, if you register your pieces with the copyright office and someone finds your work and uses it without permission, you can sue for how much you would have charged to provide that service or how much damage their usage did to your business.
For example, say you are a storyboarder, you have a great scene in mind, you post it on your website in animatic form as part of your demo reel and it gets passed around on the internet. 8 years go by and a company finds it in some forgotten corner of the web, performs a "Reasonable Search," cannot locate you, and decides to put it in their commercial or tv show. You see it and call up and say, 'hey pal, that's my stuff.' Right now, if you are following the copyright guidelines and submitting your work every year ($35 dollars for all of your artwork at once if you use their web forms), then you can sue for infringement for as much as your profits would have been had they contacted you and requested permission:

See : http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506

Current Law:
(b) Actual Damages and Profits. — The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. In establishing the infringer's profits, the copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer's gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than the copyrighted work.

Under the new law, the infringer would be required to make a "reasonable compensation." Read page 4 of the Senate Article where it clearly defines "Reasonable Compensation."

"(4) REASONABLE COMPENSATION - The term 'reasonable compensation' means...the amount on which a willing buyer and a willing seller in the positions of the infringer and the owner of the infringed copyright would have agreed with respect to the infringing use of the work immediately before the infringement began."

What this states, is that if you and the infringer had agreed to an exchange of copyrights, here's how much it would have been. This takes into account both how much you usually charge for a storyboard sequence, but also how much the buyer usually pays. If it's a high paying buyer that has taken your work - great, no problem. But if it's a low paying buyer - well, you're in for a loss. (And chances are it's the low-paying buyers that you have to worry about).

The second biggest reason not to support this bill is that it means more time and money spent registering your work, and less time drawing. If this bill passes, it means that you will have to register all of your work with a private copyright registry or risk having your work infringed. Read page 14 and 15 of the Senate Version of the Bill. It does not provide any additional protections for you, it only asks that you complete more work. You would, theoretically, also have to pay to do this work as well.
I think an overall way to keep track of stuff on the internet is a great idea - some kind of way of keeping track of whose stuff is whose. However, that is not the purpose of this bill. The bill is meant to limit our compensation, not provide a fair means for tracking visual content over the internet.

The third biggest reason not to support this is that it means less work for you. If companies can perform a "reasonable search" on art that is potentially free and have a maximum penalty of whatever they would normally pay under "reasonable circumstances," they're not going to pay you your normal rates to create something new.

Be wary as well of the organizations that are claiming "Neutral Positions," like the Graphic Artists Guild (http://www.gag.org/), though they may have good intentions...I don't know...I do suspect that they will be the ones to make money in the future off of you as a private registry.

You can see these two websites that present the opposing view points.
Hope this has been helpful.

http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html
http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html

Bryan