Wolf's Den

Because those bills are not about protecting the little guy, ie, you and me. They are about making the big guys even richer than they already are.

Don't believe me? Well, read on.

A friend has done some srious digging, this took mere minutes for her. I can only imagine what she'd find if she really looked. I have permission to crosspost and I highly suggest you do the same.

Spread the word, tell as many people as you can, artists and non artists. Get angry and go out there and do something about this. Don't let the rich guys get richer off our hard work.

"The Orphaned Works Bills are creating a battle that wages on all over the internet, an excellent sample of this can be found here: http://mollykleinman.com/2008/04/16/wonks-and-librarians/

To amuse myself I've been researching the Orphaned Works legislation everyone is wetting their pants over, people are drafting letters and poised, ready to fight. I decided to take a different route, I went looking for where it came from, seeking who pushed for it, and who owed favors that might help get it over the hump before i write any letters. This is probably the most important thing I learned while battling politicians down in Coos Bay Oregon, "follow the money". I ran into some interesting data, don't you just love the internet?

First of all the senate version is also called "The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (S. 2913) It was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and lists Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as a backer, I find this odd because Hatch appears to have drafted this originally. It's named after Shawn Bentley, who was an intellectual property counselor for Hatch for several years before he died from cancer.

Interestingly enough he also worked for years for AOL/Time Warner... who happens to be a major contributor to most of the people heavily involved in both versions.... $41,100 to Leahy alone, but they were not the biggest contributor.
Other major contributors include a litigation attorney who defends infringers, Disney, and TechNet, an interesting little group of tech moguls, (sniff: John Doerr), who do a lot of big money lobbying for "causes" that make their members wealthy.... $81,491 went to Leahy alone last year, that's a lot of gerbil food in my book. I find it interesting that they are already profiting nicely from operating registries for health care and financial information, so why not make a bundle forcing artists to register their works in a registry they run too? AND they are fighting to lower patent violation penalities... http://tinyurl.com/6gmgqq if you read the legislation both versions seek to lower and limit fines to next to nothing on copyright violations.
I feel some deja-vue coming on.... and I suspect people are gonna need to do more than write letters to stop this. I haven't stopped digging but there appears to be some major money behind these bills resurfacing, and some major players, and they are not use to losing. Maybe artists better start taking down their art and locking it up now.

I have to say I haven't had this much fun since I tracked down the skinny on one particularly powerful Environmental Impact Study company in the mid-90's that was up to their elbows in obtaining way too much Federal grant money for performing environmental impact studies (prior to public works projects that seldom actually ever occurred) in financially depressed areas, especially along the west coast. I also found a link from them to suddenly appearing HIGH interest home loans in those areas that were defaulted on at a very high percentage rate, leaving them in control of large amounts of property, some of which they sold off at a loss to local small town politicians, some they kept... the value of all of it rose dramatically within a very short period of time after they got control of it. No one cared then and I doubt they do now, so I imagine that is still going on.

Edit: BTW, It's impossible to ignore the fact that Technet CEO John Doerr sits on the board of Amazon, Google, Intuit (quickbooks), and the investment company he is a partner in is the primary funding behind Zazzle,(sorta like cafepress). I also discovered that additional donations were also made separately from Technet to many of the politicians involved, in the name of John Doerr, his wife Ann, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ( the venture capital group where John is a partner)... and under the name of everyone I have tracked so far that sits in power at Technet. The contribution numbers will soar much higher than it appears on the surface..... we may never need to buy gerbil food again.

It is always about following the moola, either where it's going to wind up, or who it's being taken from who has friends in the highest places.

I haven't figured the total contributions yet I am still tracking them.

BTW, Doerr is Numero Uno on the Forbes Midas list:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/99/biz_08midas_L-John-Doerr_2946.html
What a great little capitalist he is.....

I am sure my daughter Ramie would admire the fact he has shoveled a ton of money into backing stem cell research and lobbying for it."

More as she finds it.

These bills are not about protecting our copyrights. These bills are about TAKING THEM AWAY. These bills will effectively take anything you or I create and are unable to afford to either get a Copyright from the Copyright office on or register with the 'database' these bills would create. Thereby opening the door for these people, THE COMPANIES, to swoop in, and take our work, giving themselves the credit, because, according to them, our names won't be on it, as we won't be in their databases, so the works are 'orphaned'.

The bills are about making other people rich. These bills are about making us even more poor. It's high time we told these companies exactly how we feel about their practices when it comes to our hard work and creations.