Topic: Oh dear...

[sapata]

... what the hell???
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130430/09022922890/no-uk-did-not-just-abolish-copyright-despite-what-photographers-seem-to-think.shtml

[Ezzie]

Now that really sucks. If I interpret it correctly, even non UK photographers will be impacted. How can they do this?

[LT]

How can they do this?

It's called parliamentary sovereignty. They can legislate on want they want provide it gets through both houses (sometimes it doesn't even need to do that).

We'll have to see how the SIs pan out before we jump to conclusions.

[Paul Mitchell]

There's also an online e-petition for UK residents https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49422

Paul

[Sandeha Lynch]

Done, thanks.

[Late Developer]

CaMoron and his sidekick are a bloody joke and shouldn't be let out without stabilisers.

If this goes through, I will destroy my Flickr and Tumblr a/cs and post only here and on my own website. Although it's far from 100% effective, I'll also put a big copyright signs on photos with my name and web address next to it.

I know my stuff isn't worth much, if anything, but it is mine to do with as I wish not as some scumbag from a web hosting site wants. I hadn't realised that these sites actually stripped out metadata deliberately. That is disgraceful.

Call me a cynic but someone, somewhere is making (or is about to make) a fortune out of this....

[LT]

I think some perspective needs to be considered here. If you are posting pics to a flickr account, blog hosting site or similar, and have made your details known (an email address in your profile, and a clear statement relating to all of your work under that account) it would be very hard for someone to claim that the work was orphaned, even if metadata were stripped. It is known that people use these sites to post to a particular account - I'm not sure how any person could claim it was impossible to contact the owner in that instance.

But, as I said, the devil will be in the SI details.

[Late Developer]

Sod perspective. I've had a crap day and need to vent......  

[Phil Bebbington]

I agree, Leon

If we are posting our images on  sites that our details are on too, it would be  difficult to say they had tried and failed to contact us. When your stuff has been out there for years it would be difficult to reign it in and remove it.

[Francois]

Well, I see a few things which can help.
Keep a fixed email address where you can be reached (gmail or other). Regularly check this address.
Insert EXIF tags on your images (my old shot on film app)
Do a visible watermark on the image (Watermark V2 might be old but it does a pretty darn fine job http://www.pmnet.info/watermark/)
Allow robots to archive your site (like the one from archive.org)

Apart from that, there's not much else you can do...

[sapata]

How can anyone's work be considered as "orphan"?? For sure, to upload an image on the web you need a profile to do so!

Even the non professional photographer has his name attached on images... like the millions of people on Facebook with their snapshots and iphoneography, the images are all under the name of the profile's person... I don't really get this "orphan" thing.

And regarding the metadata, if this also applies for ilustrators... how they're gonna do?

[Sandeha Lynch]

It's true that on personal websites, including Flickr accounts, images are linked to a name.  In the necessary "diligent search" the ownership and copyright is pretty obvious.  However, when an image has been lifted and hosted elsewhere without any link back to its source, if it has neither EXIF nor watermark it effectively becomes an orphan.  A corporate user/exploiter might then find excuses for making free use of it, creating far too much hassle for the owner to make a fight of it ...

[Ezzie]

What you describe Sandeha is rather like making buying stolen goods from a fence legal. And I can see that happening. And which is why this will not just impact UK photographers, the net knows no such boundaries.

Not that my stuff has much commercial value, I just hate the fact that someone else can claim ownership of what is mine.

[sapata]

I see Sandeha... it makes sense now