If a user (regardless of whether he is a big media conglomerate or one of us) found a video on Youtube, or elsewhere on the web, I would think it'd be easier to identify the owner. I mean, in comparison to a shoebox of photos found at a garage sale or flea market? Youtube provides ways to contact the owner of a clip. Domain names have registries you can use to track back the owner. If you can do that, orphan works limitations like in these bills probably won't apply to you, because the owner can be found.
What this bill is really about is making copyright registration mandatory if you want to ever get paid for your works.
Neither of the bills require any new kind of registration, or even having to have registered your work in the first place. A user would have to compensate you (as an owner) whether or not your work was registered. If the user didn't put diligent effort into their search, the user would be on the hook for the usual statutory damages (which requires registration, but that's the how the law is today).
The "visual registries" part of the bill is supposed to encourage the market to come up with solutions for the failure of the Copyright Office's online registry, as it really doesn't help users find owners. Search results are all in text, and descriptions of works are terribly ineffective for matching a work in hand. Owners don't have any requirements for using these visual registries--but they will help owners to be found.
Slashdot Mirror
If a user (regardless of whether he is a big media conglomerate or one of us) found a video on Youtube, or elsewhere on the web, I would think it'd be easier to identify the owner. I mean, in comparison to a shoebox of photos found at a garage sale or flea market? Youtube provides ways to contact the owner of a clip. Domain names have registries you can use to track back the owner. If you can do that, orphan works limitations like in these bills probably won't apply to you, because the owner can be found.
Neither of the bills require any new kind of registration, or even having to have registered your work in the first place. A user would have to compensate you (as an owner) whether or not your work was registered. If the user didn't put diligent effort into their search, the user would be on the hook for the usual statutory damages (which requires registration, but that's the how the law is today).
The "visual registries" part of the bill is supposed to encourage the market to come up with solutions for the failure of the Copyright Office's online registry, as it really doesn't help users find owners. Search results are all in text, and descriptions of works are terribly ineffective for matching a work in hand. Owners don't have any requirements for using these visual registries--but they will help owners to be found.