Take action today!
Ok, I realize I just wrote about a week’s worth of posts into one post just now, but this is too important to put off. If you believe in the right of a knit designer or any other visual artist to preserve their copyright, please contact your congressional representatives today about the currently-fast-tracked Orphan Works legislation.
It’s easy to do — go to this site. There are many options to choose from, but a good generic one to use is here. Here’s a portion of a letter written by a paper arts studio that should give you an idea of what’s at stake:
This bill will basically allow anyone to use a design after a ‘reasonable search’— without the copyright holder’s permission. Even if the copyright holder objects, he has no recourse because the bill eliminates the statutory damages that prevent rampant infringement. The bill further requires copyright holders to register their work on a digital database system that does not exist, and might never exist. Yet the bill will be enacted whether or not these data bases— and the technology needed to effectively search them— ever come into existence.
See what I’m saying? Not good stuff. So please do contact your congressional reps about this — it does not bode well for the knit designers and visual artists of the world if it gets put into law. Come on. Look at what the Congress has done over the past seven years to individual liberty in this country — do you really think they give a damn about how this horrible legislation will affect knit designers? I doubt it. So let’s raise a fuss, shall we?
It took me 14 months to make, using 4ply wool, 3mm needles, a plain jumper pattern from the seventies, a ton of graph paper and pictures of Wonder Woman, and about a million bobbins for the intarsia.
