Equity for Visual Artists Act of 2011
Latest action · Dec 15, 2011 Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. (text of measure as introduced: CR S8681-8682)
Progress
Where this bill reached, and when. A stage with no date was not reached; one that failed a vote and later carried shows the date it carried.
- IntroducedDec 15, 2011
- Passed SenateNot reached
- Passed HouseNot reached
- To the PresidentNot reached
- Became lawNot reached
Summary
Equity for Visual Artists Act of 2011 - Requires, whenever a work of visual art is sold for at least $10,000 at an auction by someone other than the authoring artist, that the entity collecting the money or other consideration pay a royalty equal to 7% of the price to a visual artists' collecting society.
Defines an "auction" as public sale run by an entity that: (1) sells to the highest bidder works of visual art in which the cumulative amount of such works sold during the previous year is over $25 million, and (2) does not solely conduct the sale of such visual art on the Internet.
Requires the collecting society to: (1) distribute half of the net royalty to the artist or their successor as copyright owner, and (2) deposit the other half into an escrow account to fund purchases by U.S. nonprofit art museums of works of visual art authored by living artists domiciled in the United States.
Establishes a copyright infringement offense for the failure of the entity collecting the money or other consideration to pay such a royalty. Subjects an infringer to the payment of statutory damages.
Excludes works of visual art from copyright notice procedures.
Directs the Register of Copyrights to issue regulations governing the designation and oversight of visual artists' collecting societies.
Requires that specified fees be paid to the Register out of the total royalty payments received by collecting societies.
Cosponsors
Members who signed on, in the order they did.
Actions 3
Everything that happened, newest first.
- Dec 15, 2011Introduced in Senate
- Dec 15, 2011Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. (text of measure as introduced: CR S8681-8682)
- Dec 15, 2011Sponsor introductory remarks on measure. (CR S8681)
Related bills 1
Companion bills and other measures the record links to this one.
| Bill | Title | Relationship | Latest action |
|---|---|---|---|
| HR 3688 | Equity for Visual Artists Act of 2011 | Identical bill | Jan 6, 2012 |
Subjects
Assigned by the Library of Congress. Policy area: Commerce.
Text 1
Each version as it was printed, newest first.
- Dec 15, 2011Introduced in Senate
Everything here is as published by Congress: the summary is the Congressional Research Service's, the action wording is the clerks', and the subjects are the Library of Congress's. How far it got is read from the actions themselves, taking the most recent one of each kind, so a bill that failed a vote and later passed is shown as having passed. Records come from this bill on Congress.gov and govinfo.gov.