Proposed UK Copyright reforms

CabanSail

I have just heard that the UK Government are proposing to change the Copyright Laws. If these laws are introduced then individuals will be allowed free use of all images for non-commercial reasons.

What happens in the UK seems to follow on here quite quickly.

Article in the British Journal of Photography

Not necessarily, we share aspects of common law with the UK but this would be statute law. What happens there will have no effect on Irish copyright unless our statutes are changed, unlike common law cases where precedence set in the UK can be applied over here.

Kintarō Hattori

That's just...... insane. There's no other word for it.

Paulw

It'll have no effect on Irish copyright law.

I can see many in the UK objecting to that proposal anyway.

We'll still hold our Irish copyright protection, as well as European copyright protection.

DaireQuinlan

CabanSail wrote: »

I have just heard that the UK Government are proposing to change the Copyright Laws. If these laws are introduced then individuals will be allowed free use of all images for non-commercial reasons.

What happens in the UK seems to follow on here quite quickly.

Article in the British Journal of Photography

I was just reading this piece about half an hour ago. I'm frankly amazed by it. Much like the orphan works hoo-ha last year though, I think the BJP has overstated the case. Now admittedly that's the only info I've read on it, but it claims that the report asks "rights holders to broaden the terms of their licenses, allowing the public to use photographs for non-commercial uses without payment." which is the bit people are (justifiably) getting up in arms over. However, it just looks like it'll be one of those recommendation things, which individuals are free to implement or not.

It opens up a whole new can of worms anyway. What now constitutes a commercial use ? Is Joe Blogger who grabs one of your images without asking but who has ads on his blog actually using them in a commercial sense ? I'd say so ... he'd probably claim not ... etc etc etc.

smelltheglove

Thats a bit over the top isnt it... wow. I know in the digital era people like to share images on social networking sites with friends, for this reason I, along with many other photographers, supply such images with a copyright symbol and my name so as anyone who sees it and wants it knows where to look, this is fine with me but I would not be happy if a client was showing off an image online that they were happy with without showing where that image came from.

Such a proposal could potentially mean a huge loss for the likes of landscape photographers, off the top of my head, Ballyman has taken a few fantastic shots, and more recently Caline. If this was to pass here, which I highly doubt anyway, it would mean people could go onto their sites and download images which they could then print themselves, and hang for display in their homes, which would cause 2 problems for the photographers involved, loss of earnings along with poor samples of their work from which they would be unlikely to receive any further work from. In my eyes a proposal liek this would be absolutely ridiculous.

trishw78

There's a petition on line some place I saw it mentioned on twitter earlier in the week.

DaireQuinlan

trishw78 wrote: »

There's a petition on line some place I saw it mentioned on twitter earlier in the week.

Ah. Online activism at its finest

Paulw

Not that it'll matter, since we're in Ireland, and any petition won't effect us, nor will the UK law.

A thread worth ignoring really.

democrates

Is it just me or is the frequency of photos are being used without permission increasing?

Anything that raises public awareness of the rights of photographers trying to make a living would be a good thing, and it's hard to imagine our 'knowledge economy' government taking anything other than a hard line on 'IPR', driven primarily by software and biotech interests.

KarmaGarda

Some of us on the forum do actually live in the UK, so, this thread is VERY important! (*pokes fajitas!*)

I'm off to find that petition... :mad:

dnme

AFAIK

Copyright law is based on the Berne convention, Switzerland agreed and ratified many years ago. It is accepted internationally and is primarily designed to protect literary and artistic work (very much covers photography).

I think a single nation augmenting the transposition of the agreement would be problematic and might remain isolated.

KarmaGarda

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/copyrightreform/sign

Anyone in the UK get signing!!!

Rb

It'll be a pity if this scares a lot of people into putting huge watermarks over all their online pictures.

kensutz

Online petitions aren't worth it. Who would really be bothered looking at them?

KarmaGarda

But it makes us FEEL BETTER! :pac:

ValueInIreland

Rb wrote: »

It'll be a pity if this scares a lot of people into putting huge watermarks over all their online pictures.

I think anybody posting any image at more than a thumbnail size without a watermark is asking for it to be "stolen" - I compare it to putting your camera bag outside your house and expecting it to still be there in the morning!

I love asking people who are all hot under the collar about copyright of their images and the possibility of them being stolen: Do you Download Music from File sharing sites? Have you fully Legit versions of Photoshop?

As far as I can tell, a good half of the moaners are guilty of plenty of forms of Copyright abuse.

My view is that people will pay a fair price for items they want, but will breach copyright when they feel an unfair price is being asked. There are lessons to be learned here by Adobe (in particular!), but photographers are also guilty of overpricing in many cases??

charybdis

The overall tone of the article suggests heavy hand-wringing and fearmongering. I'm not very familiar with the particular report, but I'm certain the article misrepresents the situation.

Jones, who says he will be actively lobbying his local MP, Chris Ruane, maintains there is no need to ‘meddle’ with the current copyright system at all.

This, in particular, is what I take most issue with. There are so many flaws with our current intellectual property system(s) that need addressing. The report in question seems to suggest the simplification of copyright and the introduction of "fair use"-style permissions for non-commercial use of copyrighted material, which I certainly agree with.

As a matter of interest, has anyone here not ever ripped a legitimately purchased CD to a digital audio format for use on their computer or portable music player?

kensutz wrote: »

Online petitions aren't worth it. Who would really be bothered looking at them?

You'd be surprised.

mrboswell

You'd be surprised.

Only because he was a "war hero"

Calina

This might be worth looking at as well.

charybdis

mrboswell wrote: »

Only because he was a "war hero"

What?

Well, perhaps if you whip up a "war hero" into a misinformed hissyfit about their photographs being stolen, the petition would gain some traction.

AnCatDubh

British Journal of Photography reports the UK Going ahead with changes to UK licencing rules.

I dunno, I'm all for a brave new world but i'll have to read this a bit more.

Here's a question for you to consider?

If Ireland were to take a similar approach and legitimise the personal use of copyrighted images, would you remove your content from online sources / flickr / pix.ie, etc.

Would that be death to the random thread?

Paulw

AnCatDubh wrote: »

If Ireland were to take a similar approach and legitimise the personal use of copyrighted images, would you remove your content from online sources / flickr / pix.ie, etc.

Would that be death to the random thread?

I'd remove my images the very next day, or else put big ugly watermarks on all images.

Yep, death of many threads showing photos.

DaireQuinlan

I still think the BJP are sensationalising this whole thing by blithely making out that as soon as these recommendations (and they're only recommendations as of yet) are put into law everyone will immediately download all your photos and start doing god knows what with them.

I've just skimmed through the document available here:
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-types/pro-copy/c-policy/c-strategy.htm

I'd advise a read if you want an informed discussion as opposed to rabble rousing. One of the things they raise is that the entire edifice still has to be compliant with the berne convention. One SPECIFIC point they make is ...

International agreements on copyright means
that any non-commercial use must pass a threestep
test (see box 6 above) under the Berne
Convention. Step three of this test states that
if legislation permits the use of works, the use
will not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate
interest of the author.

Also with respect to the law and peoples attitudes to it:

This is significant because neither the law nor
people’s attitudes are easy to change, but the
two need to be reconciled if copyright is to be
effective in the digital age. The copyright system
cannot be expected to command public support
unless consumers can use works in the ways
they want, such as sharing photos with friends
on the Web. This means rights holders offering
works with broader terms of use.

This also brings up the point which I think the BJP are missing, that this will be as a result of persuading rights holders to offer different terms of use on the works in question.

OTOH, this seems to contradict the above, talking about allowing further use of legitimately obtained goods in a way that isn't currently covered by copyright law, but again, as with the issue raised with regard to the berne convention above, it makes it clear that if this is to happen then the author should be compensated for this use.

17. Enforcing rights over personal, non-commercial
uses of works appears disproportionately diffi cult
in the digital age and consumers have shown not
only strong unwillingness to pay directly for these
uses but also a high degree of resentment that
they should be asked to do so.
18. A case can therefore be made for a broader,
better-defined exception to copyright that allows
personal, non-commercial use of legitimatelyobtained
copyright works without explicit
permission. This might apply not only to the
reproduction of works, for example to transfer
old LPs or CDs onto a computer, but also for
example to creating derivative works and/or to
sharing with family and friends. An expanded
exception for non-commercial use could impact
on revenues for rights holders; an element of fair
compensation for any loss would be required.

This of course never actually addresses where this compensation will come from, or who's going to administer it or collect or anything else. My take on this is that this is all blue sky thinking. It'll never go anywhere. There are far too many vested interests and commercial concerns for this to actually wend its way into law I think.

democrates

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

My take on this is that this is all blue sky thinking. It'll never go anywhere. There are far too many vested interests and commercial concerns for this to actually wend its way into law I think.

That seems to be the lay of the land alright. I still like the fact that the body politic has put certain organisations who purport to represent 'rights' holders on the defensive for once. I'd like to see a similar exercise here to keep IRMA occupied.

I think our interests as photographers needs to be seen in it's wider context, with our citizen hats on. The three strikes rule which eircom have accepted is one example of where corporate interests want to go, Apple have just patented a technique that forces users to pay attention to ads by making them complete a quiz before the device will fulfill it's function, a similar feature was mooted by a tv network to lock the tv controls for ads, and there's huge lobbying pressure to legalise software patent monopolies in the EU. The daddy of them all is biotech where it was partly thanks to the open source Perl programming language that our human genome sequence itself escaped becoming the "intellectual property" of one company, yet still Monsanto et al are on the offensive.

These are all battles in the perennial global class war because capitalism has one driver: concentrating wealth with shareholders, that's the fiduciary duty of a standard company's officers as laid down in its articles of association so as the FT observed, genuine corporate social responsibility remains open to legal challenge. Capitalism has a role but we still have a way to go in making it better serve the common good. The extremes of anarchy or totalitarianism aren't the answer, a sensible middle-ground has to serve the common good but also give reasonable support to creators and innovators.

It's against this backdrop that I'd take a flexible approach in non-commercial re-use of photos I've taken, attribution with a link would seem fair enough to me. The blanket copyright awarded to photographers is a fairly blunt instrument, we're not the only stakeholders in images with human subjects or featuring the property of others. Since we are engaged in some reuse ourselves, allowing others to reuse in turn while supporting photographers livelihoods would be a bonus for us and society at large. That's my 2c on it at the moment anyway, I must look at those creative commons licences again...