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UK Government passes “Instagram Act”

138 points by choult 13y ago

kbutler 13y ago
"For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work" Someone really needs to study the history of copyright.
swombat 13y ago
Damned if you do, damned if you don't! If you pass more stringent copyright laws, people roast you on a pitchfork for fucking creators over by restricting how they can use other people's works. If you pass looser copyright laws, people roast you on a pitchfork for fucking creators over by not restricting how others can use their work. In such a situation, where the geek world is the first to shout abuse at politicians the minute they make any changes, it's no surprise that the smoother-talking Disney lobbyists win. As a community, we have got to get our shit together and start having a clear position. For myself, I think any step that weakens copyright is good at this point, so I think this is a great move. It opens up a huge realm of creative activity. Now they just need to apply this to music, movies and text too.
- choult 13y ago
  I agree that it might open up a "huge realm of creative activity" on the amateur or cottage industry side, but it also removes a lot of content creators' rights when larger corps who can afford licensing fees rip us off. I'm not the biggest supporter of modern copyright - I love what I understand to be the spirit of it, but not this "death + x years" crap - but it needs to work both for the little guy and the big guy.
- regularfry 13y ago
  The problem with this is that it weakens copyright from the wrong direction: it makes more content available to big corporates without them having to give anything back.
  - zalew 13y ago
    copyright reform that takes away from the people and gives more to the big corps? that's a shocker.
- mtgx 13y ago
  Here's what the position should be. You're free to use other people's stuff that appears online, but not for commercial purposes. Putting someone's picture (that happens to be on the web, publicly available) in a post on a site, where you happen to have ads does not count as "using your image" for commercial purposes. Putting your image in an ad would. My point is that you shouldn't be able to just claim having copyright over someone's work, and then profiting from it as your own. I shouldn't be able to take the HD version of Iron Man 3, and then sell it to my local cinema. That's as far as copyright should go.
  - rdsubhas 13y ago
    How about I use those photos in my ad-supported private blog, or my ad-supported private youtube stream. Or in some way that indirectly increases my profits in the future (say buying fame instead of money)? Does that count as fair use? (PS: genuine question)
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      If you're selling advertising space then in UK and US copyright law that would likely be considered to be commercial use. That doesn't mean that it's not allowed or [in the US] Fair Use but it's a strong mark against that conclusion. There can be moral rights issues in "framing" work with your advertising too that could trump any conclusion that would otherwise fall as Fair Use.
  - sageikosa 13y ago
    Does commercial purposes count for supporting non-profits that you may disagree with? There is nothing special, nor onerous, about commercial activity that should grant it any special privileges, nor penalties.
    - JohnLBevan 13y ago
      Similarly, how about context. If there's a photo of someone on the web and you can't find the owner/subject's contact details you could put this in a post about STDs; if that post becomes popular the subject's image is then associated with the content despite them having no relation to the subject matter and not having given their consent, which could lead to awkward scenarios for that person. (I won't say a Facebook photo as this will be in the uploader's album, therefore associated with their account and thus can be considered non-orphaned).
- smegel 13y ago
  I think the community position is clear - violating copyright for personal, non public, non profit purposes is OK. Exploiting others work for commercial gain without permission and compensation not OK. What's so hard about that?
  - youngerdryas 13y ago
    Exactly. This is all you need to know about copyright. Reality on the ground always trumps theoretical reality, so everyone can stop hyperventilating and breathe normally. Abolition of copyright would heavily favor entrenched forces.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    Well, the stated purpose of this law is to make it easier to exploit the work of others for commercial gain without permission and compensation (edit: actually it seems you have to pay, even if it's an orphan work and the money is kept for rights-holders who come out of the woodwork later, which further reduces the chance of someone stealing your facebook photos). And generally the community are alright with that because they're targetting "orphan works", stuff that got swept up into hundred year plus copyrights just because Disney didn't want to lose Mickey. But is now "culture" or "history", yet it is presumed to be owned by someone or something that can't be traced and found to ask permission due to death, bankruptcy, poor recordkeeping etc. The people protesting this law seem to be making the dubious claim that you can now steal the copyright to anyone's digital media (film, music, photo, books) you find online just by stripping some metadata. This seems, on the face of it, absurd. And if it's true then there will be better things to steal than someone's facebook photos. Why would those big nasty US coporations steal your family photos when they could steal stuff with actual value from other big nasty US corporations? edit: a UK government response to previous scaremongering from the same source: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/blog/2012/08/02/uk-copyright-and-orphan-works-the-facts/ http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/htt...
    - smegel 13y ago
      Facebook photos would be/are extremely valuable to advertisers. And very few would have contact metadata attached, which is irrelevant anyway after your mate reposts the image to imgur for a Reddit post. And i guess they would rather steal from someone who can't fight back than an entity that owns an army of lawyers.
- unimpressive 13y ago
  Pretty much all damage to copyright at this point is good, if only for setting the precedent that copyright is something that you can damage.
yuliyp 13y ago
This sounds like it's orphan works legislation. Apparently The Register feels as though the standard created for what constitutes an orphan work is too low. Can anyone who understands UK law actually clarify what it actually means? The article reads as way too sensationalist to feel credible here.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  The Register (and this author especially) are rabidly pro-IP in a way that you'd think would be out of place on a tech site. As far as I can tell, they're against orphan works laws in any shape or form. Whether they're taking that stance to protect the semi-professional photographer as they seem to be claiming is another matter. Any (possibly valid) criticisms of the actual form of this law (and similar outrage over one in France) seems to be incidental to the fact that they don't want any weakening of IP to occur at all, ever.
deleted 13y ago
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chewxy 13y ago
I do not get the outcry over this. This is a Good Thing with capital letters. We as a whole species are currently producing more content than the sum of humanity prior to the 20th century per day every day. Content production has become so cheap, in fact just the other day I wondered if "from each his own ability; to each according to his need" can be rightfully applied yet. Sure, you say there are moral issues of profiting off the backs off someone's hard works. But such a law allows you to also do the same. You might say for example, that you don't intend to do the same. Good on ya mate. Then go profit off your own work, and also allow others to profit off your work! This is not a pie that is finite in size. If someone does not intend to profit off their own work anyway, what is it to them then that someone else profits off their work? That said, I think attribution is still a requirement as we enter the age of digital communism
- regularfry 13y ago
  This act applies precisely in the case where attribution isn't possible.
  - chewxy 13y ago
    yah I am aware. Orphan works.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > This act applies precisely in the case where attribution isn't possible. That's the intention. However when the system is "I tried to find out who took this picture, I failed, therefor I can use it freely", then surely that system can and will be gamed badly?
    - yarrel 13y ago
      If the judge can find the image in Google, that's not going to end well.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
jdmitch 13y ago
It sounds like the article is saying that many photos will be automatically "orphaned"... Looks like there would be a ripe opportunity for an app (or at least a new feature from Instagram) that registers the IP for your photos automatically... can't be that hard!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gadders 13y ago
  Seganograhpy to hide your email address in the picture?
- mmcnickle 13y ago
  Registries for photo copyright already exist.
  - seabee 13y ago
    Online registries, even! Though unless you're semi-professional you're probably not willing to pay the prices to do so: http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/services/price_list http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/services/price_list
- voyou 13y ago
  Instagram effectively already has that feature - if you post a picture on Instagram, any cursory web search is going to find it, linked to your Instagram account, so it won't count as orphaned. The article's claim that "most digital images on the internet today are orphans" is just nonsense.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
This sounds terrible. First of all the use of 'diligent search' in the legislation. What constitutes a diligent search? The worst bit however is that if this turns up nothing the user of the 'orphan' work now has the ability to become the owner of it AND license it to others. As the site says "This gives the green light to a new content scraping industry, an industry which doesn't have to pay the originator a penny." It seems like the government tried to do something good here and really didn't think it through.
- voyou 13y ago
  The user of an orphaned work can't become the owner - the legislation specifically prohibits granting users of orphaned works exclusive rights. Because of this, sublicencing seems like a non-issue, because anyone who could sublicense an orphaned work from a user of that work, could just directly license it from whatever body licenses orphaned works.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  There is a genuine problem with orphan works, but normally (IME) the term refers to obscure or older works where there copyright holder can't be identified or contacted for an extended period. I can't find the final text of this Act on any official source yet, but if the wording "diligent search" is all there is then that certainly sounds a lot like "Well, I Googled for the first two words of the book and couldn't find an obvious owner, so now I can resell it" territory. What I haven't seen anyone explain so far, and again can't check for myself until the final wording is published somewhere accessible, is what happens if someone starts copying/sublicensing an "orphan" work and then the copyright holder finds out and identifies themselves. In earlier discussions about orphan works, which have been going on for years and covered by several public reviews at this point, this issue never seemed to be dealt with in a satisfactory way.
andybak 13y ago
Note that the author of that piece - Andrew Orlowski - is a man with an axe to grind with regard to copyright reform. This is a significant factor to consider. Read his other work.
- AlexHamilton 13y ago
  The Register is also rabidly hostile to Wikipedia - and I find it hard not to leap to uncharitable interpretations of their motives (as paid journalists)
mcintyre1994 13y ago
I don't understand how it is so difficult to get copyright to work on the internet, it seems like this problem should have been solved by a licensing structure like we see with GPL etc. Make everything on the web available by default for personal use, but not commercial use. Then have 2 licenses: No, this can't be used for personal use (eg Netflix) and Yes, this can be used for commercial use too. Both should have a modifier for Source must be attributed. Put the creator in control and get out the way. Of course we should allow more fine-grained licenses like we see for source code etc, but the two simple licenses should cover most use cases I think.
- zalew 13y ago
  Most of what you propose is covered by creative commons. Sadly, in practice, CC is a shitty deal for photography in general.
  - pkhamre 13y ago
    Why?
    - zalew 13y ago
      These rants cover the issues pretty well http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/creative-commons-and-why-youre-getting-railed/ http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/creative-co... http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/creative-commons-and-the-case-of-the-hotel-pool-sperm/ http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/creative-co... http://www.powazek.com/2004/02/000372.html http://www.powazek.com/2004/02/000372.html
      - klez 13y ago
        Couldn't the pool article and the nazi newsletter be considered derivative works? If so one could use a ND clause for the license.
        zalew 13y ago
Osmium 13y ago
Would using a reverse image search engine qualify as a "diligent search"? In principle, I think a law like this in regards to truly orphaned works is not a bad thing, as long as the penalties for abuse are proper (e.g. news programmes trying to credit "YouTube" for something they've ripped off someone else, or newspapers stealing someone's Twitter photos -- where it's entirely clear how to contact the person who owns the photo).
Vivtek 13y ago
Man, I'm torn here. Making orphaned works public-domain is really a positive move, but the law doesn't appear to be using a great definition of orphaned if this article can be believed. It does beg a question, though: I don't live by photography (otherwise my children would be starving) but if I were, wouldn't I put my name and contact into any metadata?
- buro9 13y ago
  > wouldn't I put my name and contact into any metadata And then things like CloudFlare+ might optimise the image discarding meta-data during compression of the image, and a person solely relying on the image will not be able to find the creator. The only option will be to visibly watermark the image with the creator name. + I'm not sure if CloudFlare does do this, but something may optimise the image and discard the EXIF or other meta-data.
  - Already__Taken 13y ago
    Well imgur does that and if you have fans copying images to imgur to share on forums as to not ddos the author you might see this problem.
  - polshaw 13y ago
    Watermarks are often removed, via cropping or photoshop. The only solid option of protecting your work is to add it to a copyright registry, which isn't likely to be free.
smegel 13y ago
The big issue to me is how it applies to photos of people and advertising. If your friend takes a photo of you then dumps it on imgur...and a week later you appear on billboards selling something objectionable...what are your rights?
jobigoud 13y ago
In practice, does this apply only to pics created by UK citizens ? If yes, how can they identify the citizenship of the author since we are talking about orphan works ? If not and it applies to every pics, how does it not conflict with other legislations ?
ianox 13y ago
The article mentions: "The Act contains changes to UK copyright law which permit the commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the owner is missing" Does your username in the URL e.g. instagram.com/username, constitute "information identifying the owner"?
pasevin 13y ago
We are in the twisted age when a 16 year old, farts in his bedroom and someone buys his ideas for millions of dollars. Or every looser has a mobile phone in his pocket and hopes one day to take "THAT" image which will bring him glory and fame, then we have miserable creatives, who remix everything they can find on the internet and hope that this will make them valuable too. Online community is suffering from hard case of schizophrenia, as at the same time they are consumers and creators. They want to take, but don't want to give. So corporations just use that to their advantage. I would suggest calm the f* down, and decide what you are good at and make money from it, not hope you will one day make it big from being in a right place in a right time. And if you give more than you ask, humanity will only benefit.
oneandoneis2 13y ago
I don't understand why this is being represented as "Your pics can now be stolen" - a key proviso is that they have to do "a diligent search". Google Images (for one) allows you to search by uploading a photo, and I can't remember the last time I was able to "beat" it by downloading a photo that it couldn't identify the source of. If you're a pro and want your photos to stay yours, put it where Google (or whoever) can see it and it if somebody steals it, you have every right to sue them for failing to do their due diligence. Am I missing something?
- yarrel 13y ago
  Yes. The author is Andy Orlowski...
- JohnLBevan 13y ago
  Despite Google Image search existing, perhaps there's still an opening for a site where you register your work; thus creating an easy place for people to check when looking for owners (i.e. if an image is used all over the web Google may return thousands of results leaving the originator hidden several pages into the results; assuming the places which have used this content haven't provided an easy means to get back to the original / haven't included copyright info this may be hard to track). Image search engines could also use metadata from this site to provide a side bar summary about the image's ownership and licensing info.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  Am I missing something? Yes: not all copyrighted works are freely available on the Internet. Indeed, it is the ones that are not that are probably the most important to protect in terms of the copyright holder's legal rights, and as a matter of practical reality, putting such things on a publicly available site might substantially reduce their actual value. That tends to lead into the "so just register it with my central archive instead" argument, which effectively reverses the automatic granting of copyright that has been established for many years now and imposes a potentially expensive burden on exercising your basic legal rights under copyright law.
evoloution 13y ago
Adobe Flash will start becoming popular again :)
polshaw 13y ago
To be clear this covers all creative works, not just images. Orphaned works will not become free, they will require a paid licence. I'm not sure what to think of it. Bill documents — Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/enterpriseandregulatoryreform/documents.html http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/enterpriseandreg... Orphan Works impact assessment: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/IA12-025B.pdf http://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/IA12-0...
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killermonkeys 13y ago
It is impossible to judge the impact from this rant but I can certainly say that ownership of intellectual property is not a human right. Nor does the Berne Convention hold that it is a human right. Can we please ensure that every human being has the right to life, security, and liberty before we throw in the right to claim the creation and ownership of intellectual property without registration and justification.
pla3rhat3r 13y ago
Um, so in other words stop posting stuff on the internet. Period.
6d0debc071 13y ago
If you make a diligent search a requirement, then the incentive is to make such a search impossible to perform effectively; obfuscate the ownership if you can.
_k 13y ago
So Google UK is now allowed to use everyone's photographs (not just thumbnails) and use those photographs to sell ads next to it. How is that right ? It only applies to orphan works but you can easily and in an anonymous way strip out the metadata. And companies like Google could take it one step further. All they have to do is start a LLC in the UK for the Google image search part of its business, go to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, ... take all the photos, strip the metadata, say it was someone else who must have done it, make a lot of money.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  So Google UK is now allowed to use everyone's photographs (not just thumbnails) and use those photographs to sell ads next to it. How is that right ? Google Image Search is already doing something awfully close to that, and the legality of doing so is surely going to be disputed in court sooner or later. They appear to be bandwidth leaching in a way that has been considered poor netiquette since forever, too. In fact, in an earlier court case in the US the fact that they weren't actually hosting the material themselves even though to a viewer it would look like they were was a key point for their defence.
wtracy 13y ago
So, some third party strips your work of contact information such that due diligence does not turn up any way of finding you, and redistributes it. Can this third party be in any way legally liable for lost income or other damages?
drcube 13y ago
I don't understand how someone can lay copyright claim to a work they didn't create? I'm all for weakening copyrights. But this seems like weakening it only for the average person, while allowing huge organizations to scoop up any "unclaimed" work as their own -- from which they can then extract rents, even from the actual creator. Am I misreading this?

138 points by choult 13y ago

"For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work" Someone really needs to study the history of copyright.

swombat 13y ago

Damned if you do, damned if you don't! If you pass more stringent copyright laws, people roast you on a pitchfork for fucking creators over by restricting how they can use other people's works. If you pass looser copyright laws, people roast you on a pitchfork for fucking creators over by not restricting how others can use their work. In such a situation, where the geek world is the first to shout abuse at politicians the minute they make any changes, it's no surprise that the smoother-talking Disney lobbyists win. As a community, we have got to get our shit together and start having a clear position. For myself, I think any step that weakens copyright is good at this point, so I think this is a great move. It opens up a huge realm of creative activity. Now they just need to apply this to music, movies and text too.

choult 13y ago
I agree that it might open up a "huge realm of creative activity" on the amateur or cottage industry side, but it also removes a lot of content creators' rights when larger corps who can afford licensing fees rip us off. I'm not the biggest supporter of modern copyright - I love what I understand to be the spirit of it, but not this "death + x years" crap - but it needs to work both for the little guy and the big guy.
regularfry 13y ago
The problem with this is that it weakens copyright from the wrong direction: it makes more content available to big corporates without them having to give anything back.
- zalew 13y ago
  copyright reform that takes away from the people and gives more to the big corps? that's a shocker.
mtgx 13y ago
Here's what the position should be. You're free to use other people's stuff that appears online, but not for commercial purposes. Putting someone's picture (that happens to be on the web, publicly available) in a post on a site, where you happen to have ads does not count as "using your image" for commercial purposes. Putting your image in an ad would. My point is that you shouldn't be able to just claim having copyright over someone's work, and then profiting from it as your own. I shouldn't be able to take the HD version of Iron Man 3, and then sell it to my local cinema. That's as far as copyright should go.
- rdsubhas 13y ago
  How about I use those photos in my ad-supported private blog, or my ad-supported private youtube stream. Or in some way that indirectly increases my profits in the future (say buying fame instead of money)? Does that count as fair use? (PS: genuine question)
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    If you're selling advertising space then in UK and US copyright law that would likely be considered to be commercial use. That doesn't mean that it's not allowed or [in the US] Fair Use but it's a strong mark against that conclusion. There can be moral rights issues in "framing" work with your advertising too that could trump any conclusion that would otherwise fall as Fair Use.
- sageikosa 13y ago
  Does commercial purposes count for supporting non-profits that you may disagree with? There is nothing special, nor onerous, about commercial activity that should grant it any special privileges, nor penalties.
  - JohnLBevan 13y ago
    Similarly, how about context. If there's a photo of someone on the web and you can't find the owner/subject's contact details you could put this in a post about STDs; if that post becomes popular the subject's image is then associated with the content despite them having no relation to the subject matter and not having given their consent, which could lead to awkward scenarios for that person. (I won't say a Facebook photo as this will be in the uploader's album, therefore associated with their account and thus can be considered non-orphaned).
smegel 13y ago
I think the community position is clear - violating copyright for personal, non public, non profit purposes is OK. Exploiting others work for commercial gain without permission and compensation not OK. What's so hard about that?
- youngerdryas 13y ago
  Exactly. This is all you need to know about copyright. Reality on the ground always trumps theoretical reality, so everyone can stop hyperventilating and breathe normally. Abolition of copyright would heavily favor entrenched forces.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  Well, the stated purpose of this law is to make it easier to exploit the work of others for commercial gain without permission and compensation (edit: actually it seems you have to pay, even if it's an orphan work and the money is kept for rights-holders who come out of the woodwork later, which further reduces the chance of someone stealing your facebook photos). And generally the community are alright with that because they're targetting "orphan works", stuff that got swept up into hundred year plus copyrights just because Disney didn't want to lose Mickey. But is now "culture" or "history", yet it is presumed to be owned by someone or something that can't be traced and found to ask permission due to death, bankruptcy, poor recordkeeping etc. The people protesting this law seem to be making the dubious claim that you can now steal the copyright to anyone's digital media (film, music, photo, books) you find online just by stripping some metadata. This seems, on the face of it, absurd. And if it's true then there will be better things to steal than someone's facebook photos. Why would those big nasty US coporations steal your family photos when they could steal stuff with actual value from other big nasty US corporations? edit: a UK government response to previous scaremongering from the same source: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/blog/2012/08/02/uk-copyright-and-orphan-works-the-facts/ http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121205183318/htt...
  - smegel 13y ago
    Facebook photos would be/are extremely valuable to advertisers. And very few would have contact metadata attached, which is irrelevant anyway after your mate reposts the image to imgur for a Reddit post. And i guess they would rather steal from someone who can't fight back than an entity that owns an army of lawyers.
unimpressive 13y ago
Pretty much all damage to copyright at this point is good, if only for setting the precedent that copyright is something that you can damage.

yuliyp 13y ago

This sounds like it's orphan works legislation. Apparently The Register feels as though the standard created for what constitutes an orphan work is too low. Can anyone who understands UK law actually clarify what it actually means? The article reads as way too sensationalist to feel credible here.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
The Register (and this author especially) are rabidly pro-IP in a way that you'd think would be out of place on a tech site. As far as I can tell, they're against orphan works laws in any shape or form. Whether they're taking that stance to protect the semi-professional photographer as they seem to be claiming is another matter. Any (possibly valid) criticisms of the actual form of this law (and similar outrage over one in France) seems to be incidental to the fact that they don't want any weakening of IP to occur at all, ever.

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chewxy 13y ago

I do not get the outcry over this. This is a Good Thing with capital letters. We as a whole species are currently producing more content than the sum of humanity prior to the 20th century per day every day. Content production has become so cheap, in fact just the other day I wondered if "from each his own ability; to each according to his need" can be rightfully applied yet. Sure, you say there are moral issues of profiting off the backs off someone's hard works. But such a law allows you to also do the same. You might say for example, that you don't intend to do the same. Good on ya mate. Then go profit off your own work, and also allow others to profit off your work! This is not a pie that is finite in size. If someone does not intend to profit off their own work anyway, what is it to them then that someone else profits off their work? That said, I think attribution is still a requirement as we enter the age of digital communism

regularfry 13y ago
This act applies precisely in the case where attribution isn't possible.
- chewxy 13y ago
  yah I am aware. Orphan works.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  > This act applies precisely in the case where attribution isn't possible. That's the intention. However when the system is "I tried to find out who took this picture, I failed, therefor I can use it freely", then surely that system can and will be gamed badly?
  - yarrel 13y ago
    If the judge can find the image in Google, that's not going to end well.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago

jdmitch 13y ago

It sounds like the article is saying that many photos will be automatically "orphaned"... Looks like there would be a ripe opportunity for an app (or at least a new feature from Instagram) that registers the IP for your photos automatically... can't be that hard!

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gadders 13y ago
Seganograhpy to hide your email address in the picture?
mmcnickle 13y ago
Registries for photo copyright already exist.
- seabee 13y ago
  Online registries, even! Though unless you're semi-professional you're probably not willing to pay the prices to do so: http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/services/price_list http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/services/price_list
voyou 13y ago
Instagram effectively already has that feature - if you post a picture on Instagram, any cursory web search is going to find it, linked to your Instagram account, so it won't count as orphaned. The article's claim that "most digital images on the internet today are orphans" is just nonsense.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

This sounds terrible. First of all the use of 'diligent search' in the legislation. What constitutes a diligent search? The worst bit however is that if this turns up nothing the user of the 'orphan' work now has the ability to become the owner of it AND license it to others. As the site says "This gives the green light to a new content scraping industry, an industry which doesn't have to pay the originator a penny." It seems like the government tried to do something good here and really didn't think it through.

voyou 13y ago
The user of an orphaned work can't become the owner - the legislation specifically prohibits granting users of orphaned works exclusive rights. Because of this, sublicencing seems like a non-issue, because anyone who could sublicense an orphaned work from a user of that work, could just directly license it from whatever body licenses orphaned works.
Silhouette 13y ago
There is a genuine problem with orphan works, but normally (IME) the term refers to obscure or older works where there copyright holder can't be identified or contacted for an extended period. I can't find the final text of this Act on any official source yet, but if the wording "diligent search" is all there is then that certainly sounds a lot like "Well, I Googled for the first two words of the book and couldn't find an obvious owner, so now I can resell it" territory. What I haven't seen anyone explain so far, and again can't check for myself until the final wording is published somewhere accessible, is what happens if someone starts copying/sublicensing an "orphan" work and then the copyright holder finds out and identifies themselves. In earlier discussions about orphan works, which have been going on for years and covered by several public reviews at this point, this issue never seemed to be dealt with in a satisfactory way.

andybak 13y ago

Note that the author of that piece - Andrew Orlowski - is a man with an axe to grind with regard to copyright reform. This is a significant factor to consider. Read his other work.

AlexHamilton 13y ago
The Register is also rabidly hostile to Wikipedia - and I find it hard not to leap to uncharitable interpretations of their motives (as paid journalists)

mcintyre1994 13y ago

I don't understand how it is so difficult to get copyright to work on the internet, it seems like this problem should have been solved by a licensing structure like we see with GPL etc. Make everything on the web available by default for personal use, but not commercial use. Then have 2 licenses: No, this can't be used for personal use (eg Netflix) and Yes, this can be used for commercial use too. Both should have a modifier for Source must be attributed. Put the creator in control and get out the way. Of course we should allow more fine-grained licenses like we see for source code etc, but the two simple licenses should cover most use cases I think.

zalew 13y ago
Most of what you propose is covered by creative commons. Sadly, in practice, CC is a shitty deal for photography in general.
- pkhamre 13y ago
  Why?
  - zalew 13y ago
    These rants cover the issues pretty well http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/creative-commons-and-why-youre-getting-railed/ http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/creative-co... http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/creative-commons-and-the-case-of-the-hotel-pool-sperm/ http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/creative-co... http://www.powazek.com/2004/02/000372.html http://www.powazek.com/2004/02/000372.html
    - klez 13y ago
      Couldn't the pool article and the nazi newsletter be considered derivative works? If so one could use a ND clause for the license.
      - zalew 13y ago

Osmium 13y ago

Would using a reverse image search engine qualify as a "diligent search"? In principle, I think a law like this in regards to truly orphaned works is not a bad thing, as long as the penalties for abuse are proper (e.g. news programmes trying to credit "YouTube" for something they've ripped off someone else, or newspapers stealing someone's Twitter photos -- where it's entirely clear how to contact the person who owns the photo).

Vivtek 13y ago

Man, I'm torn here. Making orphaned works public-domain is really a positive move, but the law doesn't appear to be using a great definition of orphaned if this article can be believed. It does beg a question, though: I don't live by photography (otherwise my children would be starving) but if I were, wouldn't I put my name and contact into any metadata?

buro9 13y ago
> wouldn't I put my name and contact into any metadata And then things like CloudFlare+ might optimise the image discarding meta-data during compression of the image, and a person solely relying on the image will not be able to find the creator. The only option will be to visibly watermark the image with the creator name. + I'm not sure if CloudFlare does do this, but something may optimise the image and discard the EXIF or other meta-data.
- Already__Taken 13y ago
  Well imgur does that and if you have fans copying images to imgur to share on forums as to not ddos the author you might see this problem.
- polshaw 13y ago
  Watermarks are often removed, via cropping or photoshop. The only solid option of protecting your work is to add it to a copyright registry, which isn't likely to be free.

smegel 13y ago

The big issue to me is how it applies to photos of people and advertising. If your friend takes a photo of you then dumps it on imgur...and a week later you appear on billboards selling something objectionable...what are your rights?

jobigoud 13y ago

In practice, does this apply only to pics created by UK citizens ? If yes, how can they identify the citizenship of the author since we are talking about orphan works ? If not and it applies to every pics, how does it not conflict with other legislations ?

ianox 13y ago

The article mentions: "The Act contains changes to UK copyright law which permit the commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the owner is missing" Does your username in the URL e.g. instagram.com/username, constitute "information identifying the owner"?

pasevin 13y ago

We are in the twisted age when a 16 year old, farts in his bedroom and someone buys his ideas for millions of dollars. Or every looser has a mobile phone in his pocket and hopes one day to take "THAT" image which will bring him glory and fame, then we have miserable creatives, who remix everything they can find on the internet and hope that this will make them valuable too. Online community is suffering from hard case of schizophrenia, as at the same time they are consumers and creators. They want to take, but don't want to give. So corporations just use that to their advantage. I would suggest calm the f* down, and decide what you are good at and make money from it, not hope you will one day make it big from being in a right place in a right time. And if you give more than you ask, humanity will only benefit.

oneandoneis2 13y ago

I don't understand why this is being represented as "Your pics can now be stolen" - a key proviso is that they have to do "a diligent search". Google Images (for one) allows you to search by uploading a photo, and I can't remember the last time I was able to "beat" it by downloading a photo that it couldn't identify the source of. If you're a pro and want your photos to stay yours, put it where Google (or whoever) can see it and it if somebody steals it, you have every right to sue them for failing to do their due diligence. Am I missing something?

yarrel 13y ago
Yes. The author is Andy Orlowski...
JohnLBevan 13y ago
Despite Google Image search existing, perhaps there's still an opening for a site where you register your work; thus creating an easy place for people to check when looking for owners (i.e. if an image is used all over the web Google may return thousands of results leaving the originator hidden several pages into the results; assuming the places which have used this content haven't provided an easy means to get back to the original / haven't included copyright info this may be hard to track). Image search engines could also use metadata from this site to provide a side bar summary about the image's ownership and licensing info.
Silhouette 13y ago
Am I missing something? Yes: not all copyrighted works are freely available on the Internet. Indeed, it is the ones that are not that are probably the most important to protect in terms of the copyright holder's legal rights, and as a matter of practical reality, putting such things on a publicly available site might substantially reduce their actual value. That tends to lead into the "so just register it with my central archive instead" argument, which effectively reverses the automatic granting of copyright that has been established for many years now and imposes a potentially expensive burden on exercising your basic legal rights under copyright law.

evoloution 13y ago

Adobe Flash will start becoming popular again :)

polshaw 13y ago

To be clear this covers all creative works, not just images. Orphaned works will not become free, they will require a paid licence. I'm not sure what to think of it. Bill documents — Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/enterpriseandregulatoryreform/documents.html http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/enterpriseandreg... Orphan Works impact assessment: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/IA12-025B.pdf http://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/IA12-0...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

killermonkeys 13y ago

It is impossible to judge the impact from this rant but I can certainly say that ownership of intellectual property is not a human right. Nor does the Berne Convention hold that it is a human right. Can we please ensure that every human being has the right to life, security, and liberty before we throw in the right to claim the creation and ownership of intellectual property without registration and justification.

pla3rhat3r 13y ago

Um, so in other words stop posting stuff on the internet. Period.

6d0debc071 13y ago

If you make a diligent search a requirement, then the incentive is to make such a search impossible to perform effectively; obfuscate the ownership if you can.

_k 13y ago

So Google UK is now allowed to use everyone's photographs (not just thumbnails) and use those photographs to sell ads next to it. How is that right ? It only applies to orphan works but you can easily and in an anonymous way strip out the metadata. And companies like Google could take it one step further. All they have to do is start a LLC in the UK for the Google image search part of its business, go to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, ... take all the photos, strip the metadata, say it was someone else who must have done it, make a lot of money.

Silhouette 13y ago
So Google UK is now allowed to use everyone's photographs (not just thumbnails) and use those photographs to sell ads next to it. How is that right ? Google Image Search is already doing something awfully close to that, and the legality of doing so is surely going to be disputed in court sooner or later. They appear to be bandwidth leaching in a way that has been considered poor netiquette since forever, too. In fact, in an earlier court case in the US the fact that they weren't actually hosting the material themselves even though to a viewer it would look like they were was a key point for their defence.

wtracy 13y ago

So, some third party strips your work of contact information such that due diligence does not turn up any way of finding you, and redistributes it. Can this third party be in any way legally liable for lost income or other damages?

drcube 13y ago

I don't understand how someone can lay copyright claim to a work they didn't create? I'm all for weakening copyrights. But this seems like weakening it only for the average person, while allowing huge organizations to scoop up any "unclaimed" work as their own -- from which they can then extract rents, even from the actual creator. Am I misreading this?