Beware artists, authors, photographers — Americans want to steal your work

It seems that American lawmakers are planning a new copyright scam, which will allow people who steal your work to sue you for using it without their permission.

clipped from mag.awn.com I find nothing funny about the new Orphan Works legislation that is before Congress. An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission. Currently, you don’t have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value. The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies who will run the new private copyright registries. These registries are companies that you would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work

And if you live outside America, any American will be able to register your work and claim it as their own — remember the scammers who tried to copyright rooibos tea?

I hope this is just an April fool’s joke that’s past its sell-by date, as it’s not from an official source, but the rooibos tea incident shows that it’s just the kind of thing the Americans would do.