Copywrite

Earlier in the week, the “Copyright Modernization Act of 2006″ was introduced in the House. Here is a geocities link to a PDF file of the entire bill that Prof. William Patry put up (and his article). I won’t take up a lot of time parsing the bill, but most of what looks to be included are three familiar items, such as the former H.R. 5552, the “SIRA” bill, which adds a new section on licensing digital music, a new orphan works section (which is the part I am interested in) and a third called Copyright Protection Resources, basically appropriating $12,000,000 to to create a new operational unit at the FBI to work with the the justice department: “for the purpose of investigating or prosecuting intellectual property crimes” including appointing a Federal Prosecutor in Hong Kong and one in Budapest, Hungary, to help enforce IP law in other countries, and to create and interagency task force to ”develop and implement a comprehensive, long-range plan to investigate and prosecute international organized crime syndicates engaging in or supporting crimes relating to the theft of intellectual property.”

Plenty of other people have been vocal about parts of this bill up till now.

Public Knowledge  Electronic Frontier Foundation  IPCentral Weblog

According to reports coming from the Illustrators Partnership, the Act was pulled from the schedule for mark-up yesterday for further discussion.

I will outline the Orphaned Works provisions contained in this versions over the next few days.