Our own David Lowery makes a lot of compelling arguments in Politico on Monday morning, but this one in particular regarding a copyright registry and orphan works should be of interests to all consumers and individuals as well as all creators. Copyright effects everyone, not just musicians.

Register Your Family Albums

Both conservatives and liberals should be frightened by the “Principles’” attempt to “reformalize” effective copyright protection by encouraging Goodlatte to take away “rights and remedies” for those who do not register their works. Especially those works that the report deems to have “no commercial value”—as decided by the elites rather than the market, apparently.

So if one of the “users” the principles seem to think they represent — like me — posts a photo of my children on my Facebook page but I don’t register it, and somehow a company or individual then uses this picture commercially, or in some other vile manner, this report explicitly states that I would not have the same “rights and remedies” that I currently enjoy. In fact my reading of this report says I would have no remedies unless I were to win an argument that my family photos have commercial value — full employment for lawyers.

So are we all gonna have to register our family photos with Big Brother in order to keep control of them?

Read the full article here at Politico:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/building-a-real-copyright-consensus-91231.html