The Seattle Stranger reports this week on an issue of concern to independent artists.  The point is illustrative of why every artist should immediately register copyright in their creations.

In May 2005 at a nonprofit arts space in Portland, Maine, called The Map Room, artists Kavanaugh and Nguyen covered the walls with brown paper and called their installation Striped Canary on the Subterranean Horizon. The Map Room is embedded in a hillside, and the artists wanted to “reveal” the earth behind the walls.

Sculpture magazine touted in its April 2006 issue. The magazine featured two full-color photographswith the story. Months later, that very design appeared in the Seattle Anthropologie.

Kavanaugh explained last week in an interview at Suyama Space in Seattle, where he currently has a solo show. The artists, unfortunately, have no recourse.

“We had no rights because the piece that we did was in a nonprofit context,” he said—but if Striped Canary on the Subterranean Horizon had worn a price tag and shown in a commercial gallery (or if the artists had applied formally through the copyright office for their nonprofit temporary installation), the artists could sue for copyright infringement.”

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When I first posted about the PRO-IP Act, I never thought it would it go anywhere in the senate.  I was wrong. Senate Bill 3325 titled “Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008″ was passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and could be voted on by the full senate very soon. 

Congress dropped the terrible acronym “WHIPER” and replaced it with the less laugh-inducing “Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative” (”IPEC”).  Otherwise, the bill still directs substantial resources towards prosecuting and punishing IP infringers. It would authorize the Attorney General to prosecute civil Copyright law violations (currently, copyright registration owners are the only people with standing to sue infringers in civil matters) as well as providing inter-agency coordination and enhanced funding to U.S. Government offices charged with IP protection. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, empowering the AG to go after individuals on behalf of rights holder is a ”disturbing change” because those types of offenses can and will be pursued by the parties who believe they have actually been harmed, namely the copyright owners. 

However, many small or new content makers are unable to afford pursuing infringers in U.S. Courts.  Perhaps empowering the government to enforce their rights (essentially representing them) would actually serve to level the playing field between your independent  photographer and Warner Brothers.  On the other hand, it’s more likely that the new law will be used by large media companies to step up their prosecuton of individuals.  According to Public Knowledge, the RIAA alone sued or threatened to sue some 30,000 individuals in just the last five years.  If this bill is signed into law, the number of suits will likely increase and be paid for with Federal tax dollars. 

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What is copyright?

Copyright is the set of exclusive rights granted to the creator of a particular work. These rights include the right to reproduce the work, distribute copies, and create new works based on the original work. Copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, and can protect such things as:

• Literary works
• Software code
• Music compositions, sound recordings
• Visual works
• Films, television shows
• Architectural works, and
• any original work of authorship

While copyright registration is not necessary to own a copyright, it is required to enforce your rights and to control the use of your work.

Read the entire Legal Guide at Avvo.com

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What if you could organize your social network around your media consumption habits?  How about using your network to filter video and music content?  uPlayme thinks it may have found the content sweet spot with its new application that sits on your desktop, sees the content you play on applications like iTunes and websites like Pandora and YouTube, and creates a social network that lets you chat, connect and share with new friends online.

 
uPlayMe from uPlayMe on Vimeo.

The catch is that uPlayMe will depend on you to find and share content from non-pirated sources (YouTube is a bit suspect) and from sources that have already paid the hefty licensing fees to broadcast music (Internet Radio is hanging by a thread).  If it manages not to increase the flow of pirated content, uPlayMe should be able to legitimately make moneywithout paying licensing fees or getting permission from rights holders.  It’s an interesting model that mixes clearly non-infringing content (iTunes) with content that almost certainly infringes (YouTube).  We’ll have to see how this plays out.

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