Keep your hands off! A new CCI is born ...

I received an email this morning from photo-journalist Carrie Devorah which excitedly informed me as follows:

"YOU HAVE TO STAY SMART TO BE AHEAD OF STUP!D

LAUNCHED!!!! THE CENTER FOR COPYRIGHT INTEGRITY Where ARTS, IP, IT and Enforcement Converge (www.centerforcopyrightintegrity.com)

Photography and ARTS are the most highly stolen Property in the world of IP. I.T. designers, Search Engines and ISPs (Internet Search Providers) are creating Technology intended to remove our Copyrights, Watermarks and Identity from our ARTS Works within seconds of our putting our ARTS online.

Search Engines and ISPs disseminate our Intellectual Property globally in sizes and formats their Users reproduce without paying the Royalties and Fees we Entrepreneurs & Small Business owners are owed. The Search Engines and ISPs claim this is FAIR USE or SAFE HARBOR. No! It is stealing Property Intellectual or otherwise. It is Theft.

I was stunned when I learned Congressmen do not realize that as Small Business Entrepreneurs we don’t get paychecks, pensions, insurance or other benefits that employees receive. We don’t work, we don’t earn.

My Indiegogo campaign, KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY COPYRIGHT, began a few months back, when I realized Lobbyists paid to represent our Interests & influence Members of Congress on ARTS Copyrights Policy are not effective. What do we have to show for it?

The Legislators I meet lack someone to tell them the straight facts about ARTS realities in an Internet Technology world. I know the value of our IP. It allowed me to raise three sons by myself- through sickness and health, good times and bad. The Search Engines are making billions off of Our Copyrights and our Identity, bundling and Trafficking us online

STOP COPYRIGHT THEFT 

Help me fund this important campaign warning Technology 

KEEP YOUR HANDS OF OUR COPYRIGHT"

While it is hard to gauge the likelihood of an individual initiative such as this making any impact whatsoever, it is not hard to appreciate the sentiments that have led to it.  Many photographers in particular feel bitter about the impact of the internet on their professional calling and commercial expectations; some clearly feel disenfranchised, misunderstood or ignored in the ongoing debate -- and when they seek to explain their case they are made to feel as though they are somehow holding back the inexorable advance of beneficial technologies.

Further information can be found at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keep-your-hands-off-my-copyright--2

The Center for Copyright Integrity should not be confused with the Center for Copyright Information (or is it the Center for Copyright Infringement?), which share the same acronym, CCI.