From the Illustration Partnership Orphan Works Blog:

Orphan Works Opposition: Plan B

SEPT 27 Yesterday, in a cynical move, the sponsors of the Senate Orphan Works Act passed their controversial bill by a controversial practice known as hotlining.

With lawmakers scrambling to raise 700 billion dollars to bail out businesses that are “too big to fail,” the Senate passed a bill that would force small copyright holders to subsidize big internet interests such as Google, which has already said it plans to use millions of the images this bill will orphan.

With the meltdown on Wall Street, this is no time for Congress to concentrate our nation’s copyright wealth in the hands of a few privately owned corporate databases. The contents of these databases would be more valuable than secure banking information. Yet this bill would compel creators to risk their own intellectual property to supply content to these corporate business models. That means it would be our assets at risk in the event of their failure or mismanagement.

As David Rhodes, President of the School of Visual Arts has said, the Orphan Works bill would socialize the expense of copyright protection while privatizing the profit of creative endeavors. Copyright owners neither want nor need this legislation. It will do great harm to small businesses. We already have a banking crisis. Congress should not lay the groundwork for a copyright crisis.

– Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Illustrators’ Partnership

NOW FOR PLAN B

We MUST try to stop the House Judiciary Committee from folding their bill (HR5889) and adopting the Senate version.

PLEASE EMAIL CONGRESS TODAY.
If you’ve done it before, do it again!

It takes only a minute to use our new special letter.
Click on the link below, enter your zip code, and take the next steps.
Thanks to all of you who heeded the call to action yesterday.

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11980321

Over 70 organizations oppose this bill, representing over half a million creators.
Illustrators, photographers, fine artists, songwriters, musicians, and countless licensing firms all believe this bill will harm their small businesses. The Illustrators Partnership Capwiz site is open to professional creators and any member of the image-making public.

The Conspiracy is organizing a lounge again for FallCon this year, and we need volunteers to help run it. Note that if you are not a guest at FallCon, you can still volunteer, and if you are a guest at FallCon and have your own table, you can still volunteer (we’ll have signs you can leave at your table during your time spent in the lounge). You can volunteer for as little as a couple hours or as much as the whole weekend.

To volunteer, drop me a line at:

When you email me, please also let me know what hours you want to volunteer for. We are looking for volunteers the evening of Friday October 3rd (for set up), 9AM-5PM Saturday October 4th, and 10AM-6PM October 5th.

You can also email me with any further questions, or, better yet, ask them in the comments so others can benefit from them.

As with last year the focus will be on hanging out, meeting folks, drawing jam comics, shooting the poop, talking Conspiracy, and reading funny books. We will also be hosting a mini-comics station where people will be able to create and print their own mini-comics live for free… the MNCBA will be providing a copier, and I’m hoping to have a sponsor for supplies as well.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE: In addition to volunteers for time, we also need some folks who are willing to loan us and haul some furnishings for the lounge… couches needed in particular! Other items: comfy chairs, rugs, bars, tables, coffee tables, drawing tables, loungy decorations, etc.

Thanks!

For those that couldn’t wait, the latest St. Paul Cartoonist Conspiracy Jam Comic has been posted. Thanks to the contributors that decided to take a break from the nice weather we were having to come and join us.

Also, thanks to the nice weather, which kept the LARPers* at bay, for the most part. Instead of gaming inside Cosmic’s, they’ve found a not-so-secret backdoor to the deck, where they can fantasize about biting each other’s necks.

Next month’s jam will mark the one year anniversary of the off-shoot, rebelious, trash-talking St. Paul cell**. Any and all are welcome to join us! In fact, I dare those that live in the Twin Cities and have yet to attend a St. Paul jam to show up. I can’t say you’d be glad that you did, but at the very least you would have challenged my dare.

Speaking of challenging dares, I corresponded with both Kevin McCarthy*** and Amado “Arex” Rodriguez**** about the status of the Milwaukee Cartoonist Conspiracy/Cream City cell*****, and, well, it looks like it might happen. Stay tuned as I continually harrass them until the dream becomes a reality.

It was nice to see our cross-town rivals, the Minneapolis Cartoonist Conspiracy cell, which is also the first Cartoonist Conspiracy cell, have the time and guts to post one of their jams. I noticed that Kevin Cannon****** of Big Time Attic fame has posted the last two jams and I must say they are rather classy. Kevin implements a little tool I like to call page numbers******* at the bottom of each page. Way to go Kevin!

I’ve posted our latest jam comic below. This month’s title was “How to End the World in Ten Days.” Special thanks goes out to Ryan Dow******** for coming up with the title. For those who haven’t been reading Ryan’s online graphic novel “Weekends With Carl,” you should be ashamed. It is a great read and is updated Wednesdays and Sundays. In order to view the jam, you can click on the image below.

Want to start up your own cell? It’s easy! Just follow this link: Start a Conspiracy in Your Community. Are you one of the many rival cells that we trash? Perhaps you are a LARPer and would like exact some “internet revenge.” If so, maybe you should do something about it and post something here.

Footnotes:

* LARPers – Live Action Role Players – a group of scary individuals that attempt the craft of socializing by enacting various scenes and, sometimes, dressing up as characters found within a role playing game; in this instance it refers to people who love Halloween, think they are vampires, are horrible at doing impersonations of obscure Jewish actors, and can somehow manage to be outdoors without combusting into ashes.
** St. Paul cell – an International Cartoonist Conspiracy cell started in October of 2007 by Kevin McCarthy, Bud Burgy, and Daniel J. Olson. Thus far only two of the three original conspirators remain as Kevin decided to move to the land of milk and cheese.
*** Kevin McCarthy – a comic book writer, artist and editor that began working professionally in 1995, and, despite his better judgment, continues to write, draw and edit comic books.
**** Amado “Arex” Rodriguez – is an indie comic creator who released his own graphic novel Heavee Underground in 2007, and, along with Bud Burgy, has helped build the Muscles and Fights empire. Amado is also known for being a huge music fan and Bruce Lee geek.
***** Milwaukee Cartoonist Conspiracy/Cream City cell – apparently it is not a myth, but rather an idea that has yet to take fruition. We have been promised that it will begin producing jams at some point in the future.
****** Kevin Cannon – a well respected, all around nice guy that recently self-published his online graphic Far Arden to much fanfare. Word has it that movie rights for Far Arden have been sought out by Vivid Entertainment.
******* page numbers – a formulated plan of procedure for a group of numerals to facilitate a consumer of literature to depict printed sheets of paper in an orderly fashion.
******** Ryan Dow – a web cartoonist whose webcomic “Weekends with Carl” tells the tale of a sometimes awkward relationship between the two main characters “Ryan” and “Carl.” It is often assumed that the character “Ryan” is in fact the author. However, there is much dispute to this assumption as the character “Ryan” is a mild mannered person, while the author has a horrible temper and tends to be extremely violent.