The United States Congress and Senate are currently (and not for the first time)
considering a bill intended to address the problem of "orphan works", i.e. works
owned by
parties who cannot be found or identified, thereby denying said works' use in
research,
education etc. for fear of infringement.

Many artists in the US believe that the bill will remove the immediate and
inherent
copyright protection from all new work, "orphaning" all artistic work unless it
is protected
via registration on visual databases, databases that at present do not exist but
are
anticipated to be run entirely within the private sector. The legal onus will
rest on the
artist to register- at an as yet unknown level of expense- each and every piece
of work
they have ever created. This penalises individual artists and benefits
corporations, who
could exploit any unmarked material they come across (or, in the worst case
scenario,
remove the mark) and in the event of a challenge merely have to prove they made
a
"diligent" effort to find the copyright holder- an elastic term that could mean
nothing
more than a Google search.

Apart from constituting a violation of American artists' creative rights, this
bill could have
a big impact on visual artists outwith the USA. The Illustrators' Partnership of
America
have compiled a letter explaining the issue and the SAU encourage you to read it
by
following the link below.

Weblink:
http://www.IllustratorsPartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00267