Seems that the Digital Economy Bill rides roughshod over photographer’s concerns and leaves open massive holes that can be exploited and abused with the result that one’s copywritten photographs can can be effectively stolen.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/05/mandybill_orphan_works/
So the music and film industry have been given stronger weapons to fight those whom they see as “stealing” their work, but that us poor photographers have had our weapons confiscated.
I’ve already had one large magazine steal one of my photographs…they took one of my online photos that had a visible Copyright watermark which they remove from the photo and use it one of their articles…with no links or attribution to the photographer. So my photograph now appears to be “orphaned”. Some on else sees that article and photograph online and decides to take it. And others do the same. That’s it, my photograph is stolen and widely distributed…perhaps someone is even making out of it. But not me. Even if I do find out about someone making money from it, I probably will not be able to recover all those monies.
This quote from http://copyrightaction.com/forum/uk-gov-nationalises-orphans-and-bans-non-consensual-photography-in-public makes a good point:
The quaint notion that the author alone has prime and inalienable rights over his/her own work, must be able to restrict usage, negotiate a fee, prevent usage they consider immoral or distasteful, or assert their moral right to attribution, is about to pass into history.
This is the biggest change in UK copyright law in 150 years. It also punches holes through the Berne agreement, international copyright law and TRIPS.
More here:
- UK Gov nationalises orphans and bans non-consensual photography in public
http://copyrightaction.com/forum/uk-gov-nationalises-orphans-and-bans-non-consensual-photography-in-public - IPO meeting stalemate
http://copyrightaction.com/ipo-meeting-stalemate - Orphan works
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-types/pro-copy/c-policy/c-policy-orphanworks.htm
Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2010
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