Mona Youssef Gallery

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Orphan Artwork!

Have you heard about the Orphan art works of which Bill Gates has tried to legalize? This law means that if an Artist or his/her inheritances did not show up, their artwork will be declared as “Orphan work”. In other words, the artwork will be used, copied, manipulated, edited, modified and reproduced by the public!

How disappointing this is to Artists of all kinds! It is demeaning to their intellectual property, to their creativity and to the originality of the artwork!? Such law aimed to include music, song writing, graphic designs etc. Where are our values and the values of preserving originality?

Will our values and cultures exist in such societies when manufacturing, producing and reproducing unlimited images while neglecting the original idea of art work? This process will merely speed up the wealth of unworthy few!? “The worker deserves the wages”, thus, how that law would reserve Artists rights or will maintain cultures and history? Obviously, it is designed to simply increases the numbers of money machineries!

It is unthoughtful and inconsiderate to even think about such ridicules laws. Artists continuously pay the price high from developing an idea to creating it and making it alive! Unfortunately, Artists have been known, for centuries, as passive characters. Why? Because they are, in general, peaceful people. Thus, they get misunderstood, underestimated and being taken advantage of.

In China, copyright law does not exists. Unnumbered artists live there, sit all day long to only copy artwork from worldwide artists. Then they sale it for insignificant prices. Their policy is that when an artist/the copyright owner, finds out and clams his right, then, they would pay him/her what they have collected from their artwork!! Well, they live by what their laws allow them.

How this is so discouraging for artists while they have enough challenges to keep art as a source of income!