News Briefs

White House Releases Plan to Protect Intellectual Property Rights.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2010, the White House released the first Administration Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement. To develop this plan, the administration worked with governmental agencies and received significant input from the public, companies, industry groups, unions, consumer groups and academics, including the Graphic Artists Guild and The Copyright Alliance, of which the Guild is a member.
This Strategic Plan makes intellectual property enforcement a priority by dedicating appropriate resources and expertise, and putting the right processes in place. Specifically, the administration will:

• Lead by example by making sure that the Federal government does not purchase or use illegal products;
• Be transparent in how it develops and implements policies, how information is shared and reported at home and abroad, and through specific efforts such as increased information sharing with rightsholders and victims;
• Ensure efficiency and coordination of enforcement efforts across Federal, state and local levels, domestically and overseas, through means such as shared databases and increased coordination of investigation and training efforts;
• Enforce international rights by combating foreign-based websites and other entities that violate intellectual property rights, by increasing enforcement with trading partners and support businesses in overseas markets, including China;
• Secure the supply chain to stop illegal products from coming into the country by ensuring that law enforcement has the authorities that it needs, by encouraging voluntary cooperation by the private sector to reduce infringement occurring in the physical and the online world and by vigorously investigating and prosecuting criminal activity where warranted; and
• Collect good data, such as analyzing jobs and exports that are generated by intellectual property-intensive industries to help drive future decisions and action and in order to build an open and fair environment for American intellectual property rightsholders.

The IPEC (Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator) and the interagency committee on intellectual property enforcement will create four specific working groups to focus on government procurement, counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs, international capacity building and training, and the economic impact of intellectual property-intensive industries. The IPEC will continue to seek and receive feedback from the public as it works to implement the Strategic Plan. The Copyright Alliance was invited to submit the remarks it made in March to the next oversight hearing this week for inclusion in the public record. These comments are available here.

A fact sheet and the complete report are available for download here.

Graphic Artists Guild Sues Google

Today,  the Graphic Artists Guild joined several other creative sister organizations and individual visual artists to file a class action lawsuit against Google, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Click here for a pdf of the press release. Click here for a pdf of the complaint.

The Guild Responds to the Adminstration's Request for Input

The Obama Administration asked to hear from the creative community about how intellectual property infringement affects your livelihood. The Administration also sought advice on what the government could be doing to better protect the rights of artists and creators in our country. Click here to read the Guild's response. Click here for a pdf of the Guild's response.

Stay Current on News that Affects Your Business.

Since our Advocacy efforts so often focus on what’s in the news, you can often find out a lot about what’s happening on the Advocacy page. Other news and articles are available in the back issues of the Graphic Artists Guild Guild News.

Current News/Headlines

• The Google Book Search Library Project lawsuit has been settled. More information.
• The Opt-Out Deadline on the Google Book Search Copyright Settlement has been extended. More information.
• Guild Testifies on Unincorporated Business Tax in NYC. More information.
• The Graphic Artists Guild has filed a lawsuit. For a copy of the Guild’s statement, click here.

Stay Involved in Politics

Last year was a seminal year in politics – and this being the Chinese year of the Ox (which represents transformational change) – more is on the way. So, don't stop now. There is a lot going on and your voice needs to be heard. Get – and stay – involved.

Subscribing to the Guild’s RSS Feed

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary. RSS permits webmasters to create XML-based files containing headlines and news stories. You can subscribe to RSS feeds easily. When you do so, you'll be notified of news stories placed by whichever source you subscribe to, such as the Graphic Artists Guild.

In order to subscribe to the Guild’s RSS newsfeed, you will need an RSS reader (also known as a news aggregator). The RSS reader will allow you to view the information contained in the Guild's RSS feeds in a specific location in an intuitive way. Depending on which RSS reader you choose, your RSS feed will either appear on a selected page (such as your My Yahoo homepage), will be emailed to you, or will appear in your bookmarks. Be sure to read through the options on whichever reader application you choose and customize your feed to suit your viewing habits.

To subscribe to the Guild’s RSS feed, click onto the RSS feed icon after the Guild’s URL in your browser’s address bar, or click onto the RSS feed icon at the bottom right of any Guild website page. The RSS feed icon looks like this: 

You’ll be taken to a screen asking you to choose a RSS reader application, such as Live Bookmarks, Google, Bloglines, Yahoo, etc. If you have an RSS reader you'd prefer to use that doesn't appear on this list, select it by choosing “Choose Application.”

For more information on some common readers, click onto any of the links below:
Live Bookmarks (Firefox)
Bloglines
Yahoo
Google

For more general information on RSS feeds, visit RSS Specifications. For more information on a variety of readers, click here (if you’re on a Mac) or here (if you’re using a Windows operating system).