When Sean Bentley's Orphan Works Act bill arrived before US Congress back in April, ASMP surprised other representative bodies in the US and beyond by quickly announcing that they supported the House version of the Bill. As others read the bill, this seemed inexplicable : why on earth did ASMP support such dangerous legislation? ASMP explained that orphan works law was inevitable, so it was wiser to work with the Act and hope for amendments rather than oppose it and have some worse alternative emerge later.
ASMP's approval certainly had a knock-on effect in the US and elsewhere, undermining any hope of unified opposition, and leading some to infer that the legislation must in fact be benign and reasonable. Nevertheless a very large and loud campaign ensued wthout ASMP participation, though not without some of their membership who found the ASMP policy of support as baffling as most who read the bills. Whether because of opposition or not the OWA bill will now die in the current session due to lack of time. However it will likely be back in some form next year.
John Harrington's PhotoBusiness blog has opposed the OWA bill throughout, and he has now turned his attention to ASMP's motives and 'the appearance of impropriety'.
Harrington makes a number of claims including that ASMP had applied to Congress for funding of an image registry of the sort proposed in the House version that ASMP supported. Also that ASMP hijacked work done by UPDIG, the coalition of representative bodies dedicated toward formulating workflow standards for digital imaging. It's incendiary stuff, culminating in rather pallid denials from ASMP that feature a lawyerly use of the present tense...
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