Okay, so, I do the bulk of my work on the internet, a medium which, as much as I enjoy and rely on it, I have frankly never fully trusted. There's a part of me that's always looking over my shoulder waiting for this whole shebang to come crashing down. Consequently, when I saw that article on Orphaned Works over at the AWN site, which I normally find helpful and trustworthy, I was inclined to panic along with everybody else and start running around squawking about the end of the world. Turns out I was probably a little hasty.

 BioRebel has been good enough to point me to this article:

http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html

It discusses, in a very civil, levelheaded manner, what an orphaned work is and why people are trying to create legislation that will let people use them (It's actually perfectly reasonable). They're just trying to make it so that people can use hundred-year old photographs and stuff where the original creator is unfindable and not be afraid of getting sued. There is no legislation in the works that will force people to register all their crap. The US is not pulling out of the international copyright convention. The AWN article is, in the words of the above blogger, "miserably poorly researched." The legislation he talked about apparently died in 2006, anyway.

So yeah, lat that be a lesson to me about doing my homework before getting all riled up. I urge anyone who becme similarly worried to read the blog.

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