I discovered something through the journals of many artists online and through multiple artist in real life. Not only is it horrendous but thoroughly enraging. It is titled "The Orphan Works Bill" being pushed through American Legislation.

What the bill says is that any form of art (sculpture, photos, drawing, painting, music, animation, poetry, etc.) must be registered for the creator to have copyrights of the form of artwork. If the artwork has not been registered, any one who is willing to register it (which will likely have a fee of some sort) will then own the artwork. If this was all then it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

HOWEVER, if the artwork was registered then stolen/replicated by someone else, the creator has only a limited amount of time to lodge a complaint. If he or she fails to do so withing the alloted time, then that artwork is "Orphaned." If an image was orphaned (and therefore unregistered) then anyone who wishes to register it may do so.

The questions that arise are this:
How can one person travel through ALL image hosting sites to find any copies of his or her work?
How will this affect artwork from other nations (be it posted on an American based website or not)?
How much could this cost artist who normally sneak by all of the payments they have to make?

There are more facts to this bill that have been explained to me so far, I will try to find out what this bill contains. If any one who knows more of this situation could explain fully on how this bill will effect artists, please let me know or send me to a website (other than http://www.illustratorspartnership......rchterm=00185) that would be greatly appreciated.