PlainBillCongress, translated.Legislation. Context. Public interest.Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. (text of measure as introduced: CR S8681-8682)
Congressional Research Service
Version 00 · Introduced in Senate · Dec 15, 2011
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.
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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.
People & committees
Sen. Kohl, Herb [D-WI] · D–WI
Legislative record
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Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. (text of measure as introduced: CR S8681-8682)
Sponsor introductory remarks on measure. (CR S8681)
Introduced in Senate
Primary sources
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Source last updated: Aug 10, 2026. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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