February 22, 2006
Dear Representative:
I’ve am an ASMP member (American Society of Media Photographers) and I love my
profession though it took many years for me to get here. Let me tell you a bit of my story if I may:
I found myself
graduated from high school at the age of 16 and soon after that was living on
my own in a rather bad section of Los Angeles, working full time in an
accounting office and attending college as an accounting major in the
evenings. I was one of those kids that
didn’t have the luxury of deciding what it was I wanted to study in college; I
already knew that I had to support myself.
Luckily, I am a
right/left brain sort of person and the accounting classes went well. I even got my CPA certificate and worked in
public accounting for many years. I’ve
been blessed with the opportunity to try many different things in my life –
mom, wife, horse trainer, business owner, volunteer and financial counselor.
As a CPA, the
practice that I co-owned specialized in pharmaceutical accounting. Decades ago, before anyone else really saw
it; we knew that current trends would destroy most of these mom and pop
businesses. Most my former clients have
in fact gone out of business.
How you ask, did
I become a photographer? Well, I
decided to follow the counsel that I would give my clients when they asked what
direction to take their lives.
Sometimes, they’d come in to a bit of money and sometimes they just
realized that they weren’t living the life that they wanted to. My two very first questions always were 1)
What do you like to do? 2) What are you good at? From there we began to create their path. I have found in my experience that the
people who are the happiest in life and most often the most successful are
doing what they love to do.
For me,
photography is a convergence of all of the skills that I have built over the
years. I love meeting people and
creating images that truly reflect who they are. (Man Ray once said that to create is divine, to reproduce merely
human.) My background allows me the
freedom to work with anyone from inner city kids to Michael Dell, Governor
Perry and many other such luminaries.
We are all after all, at the end of the day, mere mortals.
I am writing you today to ask you
to help me to preserve this profession that I truly love. If the Orphan Acts passes, my copyright,
even though registered with the Library of Congress will essentially become
worthless. Right now, with the existing
laws and protections, it is already difficult enough to get compensation when
people infringe on images. This act
would severely limit our rights to redress.
Let me give you an example. I photographed someone for a financial
magazine and the magazine purchased rights for a single usage. You would expect financial publications to be
ethical – wouldn’t you? I found that
they were using my image on the web, which they had said they didn’t need and
wouldn’t pay for. My request for
payment got kicked upstairs to the CEO of the magazine. After much ducking and dodging, saying that
no one had seen my image anyway, it was itty-bitty as opposed to every other
image that they displayed, etc, etc she told me that it wasn’t there anymore
anyway. Ta dum.
Now, unfortunately, the digital
age has exacerbated this problem of infringement and I’d already been down this
road a few times. It is shall we say,
an occupational hazard.
So, I very nicely asked her if
she’d like me to send her the html because I had her web page, saved intact on
my computer and yes, I was able to tell her that I had copyrighted these images
and she was therefore liable for damages.
If the Orphan Act passes,
photographers will no longer have this stick/carrot to hold over these
people. We need your help in preserving
our profession and keeping our business model viable.
I have spoken with our ASMP legal
counsel Vic Perlman many times and I respectfully request that you give him
your full attention.
Please help us preserve our
profession. It is glorious to be able
to create images that resonate with so many people.
Thanks so much for your help in
the matter.
Sincerely,
Julie Farias 
