REMINDER: Protect Your Copyrights: Respond to this Library of Congress Survey

The survey is short. Only a few words to say about yourself and 3 questions to answer. And if you don't have the time to write, you can copy and paste our suggestions.

Please take a minute, go to this link and fill in the boxes.

A. In response to the 3 questions, here are some suggested answers.

         

B. In response to Item 4, you can upload additional comments as a pdf. Consider identifying yourself as a creator (and not a user) and make a personal statement:

Date

Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave SE,
Washington, DC 20540

I am a professional freelance artist and small business owner. I've been in business for ___ years. I specialize in _____. I am wholly responsible for all my business and overhead expenses. I pay my own insurance premiums and health care expenses. I fund my own retirement plans and have no other safety net. I earn my entire income from the licensing of my copyrighted work, so it is critical for my ability to stay in business that the US continue to provide creators with the full protections of existing copyright law.

My copyrights are my work product and my work product is my livelihood. I have experienced massive copyright infringement for the last two decades, by publishers and "advocacy organizations" who claim reprographic royalties earned by my work, by publishers who engage in unauthorized sublicensing behind subscription walls, and by infringers who steal online images.

The next Register should uphold Berne, and wholly support the efforts of illustrators to be safe-guarded by a functioning US visual art collecting society that protects the commerce of our secondary rights both domestically and overseas, and directs the secondary rights revenue stream of earned royalties to the illustrators who created the work.

Respectfully submitted,

_________________________________________________

If you've missed our previous alerts, here's the story in a nutshell: Dr. Carla Hayden, the new Librarian of Congress, has fired the head of the Copyright Office and is now soliciting advice on the "knowledge, skills and abilities" people think the new Register should have.

It has been widely reported that Dr. Hayden supports the agenda of the "open source" lobby. So if past is prologue, these anti-copyright interests will use this survey" to gin up an astroturf response from their supporters, then take the results to Congress to claim that the American people want work on the Internet to be free.

To counter the lobbying tactics of Big Internet firms, creators must respond to this survey in force with a call to retain the full protections of copyright as provided for in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution.

PLEASE DON'T WAIT UNTIL THE DEADLINE. DO THIS TODAY.