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This post is going to wander a bit, so please do bear with me.

I’d like to start with an announcement:
oDesk is going to end support for Internet Explorer 6 some time in September 2008.
I thought I had better put that out there just in case we have some readers who still use IE6 and don’t check the oDesk Community often enough.  If you’re in that group I really recommend going out and getting Firefox 3, or either upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 or Opera 9, or even Safari if you’re a Mac user.  Internet Explorer 8 is already in beta, so there’s no reason to be two generations behind the curve.

My own preference is for Firefox 3, although I use other browsers when I have to.  (I admit it, I’m a browser junkie and have four installed on this machine.)

Now that we’ve finished that important public service message, we now return you to your regularly scheduled posting.

In a previous post, I discussed some of the pros and cons of Google Documents and other forms of ‘Cloud Storage.’  While I do think Google Documents make a great collaborative tool I still have serious issues with storing client data on someone else’s machine.
Luckily, I have found an alternative.
Before I go into it further, I recommend you brace yourself, as I won’t be surprised if Nelson fires off a full broadside at this one (I expect him to look at it with his blind eye due to the source.)

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What is it?
It’s really two bills right now, one in the US House and one in the Senate. You can read the bills here:

Senate
House

Although titled differently by each legislative body, I’ll just collectively refer to the OWA (orphan works act).

Each covers essentially the same ground; they modify existing copyright law to address the problem of ‘orphan works’. Orphan works are materials that fall under copyright statute (they are created works) where a copyright holder is assumed to exist, but cannot be located. You might think of them as abandoned (or thought to be abandoned) pictures, text, or designs.
How did it come about?
The hubbub and attempt at legislation goes back to 2005, when the Copyright Office completed a study on orphan works. They found that the vast majority of artistic works either weren’t being copyrighted in the first place, or weren’t being renewed (the renewal rate was on the order of 15%).

This was seen as a burden for users of existing materials, especially libraries, museums and other non-profits. An example might help here.

Suppose you find a great little haiku on the Internet. It illustrates just what you want for your chapter on alliteration. Can you use it? Sure. But you open yourself up to lawsuit if the copyright holder sues. Being aware of this, you diligently search online (with Copyscape or another provider). You can’t find an owner. You check with the Copyright Office, but unfortunately, without a copyright date or name (which doesn’t appear on the work as you found it) there’s nothing really to search with. Can you use it? How about a picture of a cat for the cover of your book? Maybe an old picture torn out of newspaper…

There’s the problem. And it’s a big problem in the book publishing industry where other works are cited often and sometimes at length. As it stands now, all old works must be assumed protected and can’t be used without significant risk of lawsuit. The OWA attempts a fix to this problem. Their solution is to have approved private companies register materials digitally. Documents and other works could be searched to see who the copyright holder is.

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I didn’t get much done yesterday. Rather than slaving away over a hot keyboard I went to the “Heroes Happen Here” Microsoft Launch Event.

I know some of you are probably thinking something like “Dave, you’re a writer, why did you go to a Microsoft event?” I could say …

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Profiles are one of the two areas where new providers seem to have the most trouble (the other area is cover letters). As a buyer on oDesk, I’ve seen a huge range of profile quality, and know that while a profile doesn’t always reflect the quality of the provider, a …

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oDesk announced a new feature called “oConomy” today, and I’ve had some fun checking it out.

What’s the oConomy? It’s a collection of statistics (nicely presented in graphs and maps) that give details on how people are doing business on oDesk.

Many of the graphs are fun …

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