back to article How Labour’s Web2.0rhea cockup helped the photographers

Maybe photographers have a guardian angel, after all. The Stop 43 campaign to throw out the orphan works clause may be the only part of the vast Digital Economy Bill where activists have achieved their goal – rather than made things worse. With the Tories pledging to drop the clause, it’s unlikely to survive the wash-up – …

COMMENTS

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  1. irish donkey
    Thumb Up

    I wrote to my MP

    Did you?

    Will it make any difference I don't know .... but at least I am trying to make a difference.

    Will you vote?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    wow

    An Orlowski outburst which left me more cheerful than before I read it, and which only made me wish someone would punch him a little bit. Interesting times indeed. Keep it up!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Moral copyright

    Anyone care to explain what "moral copyright" is? I know what moral rights are, and why they don't appear much in Lessig's work (see http://www.lessig.org/blog/2005/02/on_the_challenge_of_moral_righ.html ), but "moral copyright" is a new one on me.

    1. Eddie Edwards
      Thumb Up

      Google must be a new one on you too :p

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_(copyright_law)

    2. Paul 4

      Google

      First result. Not difficult to find:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_%28copyright_law%29

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        reading a problem for you two, is it?

        Read the original post: I know what moral rights are. Read the wikpedia article, which makes it clear that while in some jurisdictions moral rights are are part of copyright law, they are distinct from copyright. Talk of "moral copyright" is slack journalism.

        1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

          Re: reading a problem for you two, is it?

          Don't be silly.

  4. Natalie Gritpants
    WTF?

    Not sure who's copyright has been mugged.

    It's a photo of a git on a Quattro. Surely the politician won't object since all publicity is good publicity. Audi might be embarrassed but they probably don't own that car.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      *Sigh*

      This just goes to show that some people are unable to grasp even the basics of copyright.

      Natalie, it was the photographer responsible for the original photograph. They took his work without permission, photo-shopped it and used it an advert; that's illegal.

      1. A J Stiles
        Thumb Down

        No it isn't

        "They took his work without permission, photo-shopped it and used it an advert; that's illegal."

        No it isn't. Parody counts as Fair Dealing. The Labour poster is a parody of the BBC drama series, and the Tory poster is a parody of the Labour poster. So neither poster is in breach of copyright.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Down

          Erm no its not...

          The UK currently has 5 things can be excused as fair dealing, namely: research, private study, criticism, review and reporting current events.

          There is no separate exemption for parodies and the restrictions

          1. A J Stiles
            Alert

            But it is in there

            I think you'll find, parody counts as criticism. As this relates to an election campaign in progress, it might even count as reporting current events.

            1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

              Re: But it is in there

              Not in the UK it doesn't.

        2. James 75

          togs copyright

          The issue is not the content of the images, it is the image itself. Someone took that image and they have the rights to distribute that image, or restrict distribution, as they see fit.

          Any derivitive works are subject to the person taking the image's copyright. The person taking the image must concern themselves with the rights of the people and/or content of the image (model releases, property releases etc where appropriate) but the image itself is the property of the person who took it.

  5. Gordon is not a Moron
    Thumb Up

    Andrew, I've got ask ...

    but have you been taking lessons from the other El Reg hacks ? It just that "But the problem with Freetards, even Freetard MPs – is that they don’t just miss the point, they close their eyes and run as fast as they can past it, screaming.", looks like it's comes right out of a Lewis Page handbook.

  6. John Robson Silver badge

    Why?

    Are they all publishing posters of each other?

    Do they not have any policies they'd like to tell me about?

    1. chr0m4t1c
      Alert

      Nah

      If they told you their actual policies you might ask awkward questions about the huge gaps in finance or logic in them.

  7. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    So under the Mandy bill,

    If they do this twice more do both parties get cut off from the internet and we never have to hear form them again?

    I'm just off to 'mix and remix' a copy of Avatar onto DIVX and then share it with the web2.0 - just following government orders.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: wow

    I know. Knocked me back too .... he's a much better writer than blogger imho.

    Drop the *tard stuff and simlar attempts to appeal to american teenagers and we'd be onto a winner

  9. Copyright Action

    re Moral copyright

    The European copyright system is based around copyright as a civil right - an automatic right of the person who creates something, that is inalienable, and has inalienable moral rights. It is most developed in Germany, where the additional protection of unfair contract law can be applied against rights grabs. Basically German law only permits licensing, not assignment of copyright, and moral rights (to be identified as the author, to object to distortion etc) cannot be waived. This puts creators in a more equitable position and helps prevent the market degrading into bullying.

    UK and US copyright are common law property rights that can be bought and sold, and in a market where dominant corporations offer deals you cannot refuse, has led to exploitation. Especially as UK has no unfair contract law that applies to IP. Rights grabs are everywhere thanks to sign or starve propositions that benefit only publishers.

    Of course neither address market value declining due to oversupply, but this "droit d'auteur' EC framework does go some way to ensure creators retain some of the value in their work instead of none, and it does help to ensure their work is not anonymised or misused..

    Photographers in particular have been asking for this reform for many years, through each of the successive copyright consultations, and have been ignored. Moral rights were hobbled in the 1988 Act by publishers pleading that ID'ing creators was costly and onerous. 30 years on, they're still saying the same thing.

    Orphan licensing and extended collective licensing, proposed by S43 of the DEB, have brought matters to a head. Much of the orphans "problem" has been caused by absent or weedy UK moral rights that allow use without attribution. EG see the BBC website, hundreds of images with no attribution nor metadata, an OW factory, and then they complain that OW are hurting their ability to produce work...

    As for ECL, that's eventually the nail in the coffin of copyright, stripping away the remnants of control of who may use and at what rate, with "opt out and starve" the only option, and all the costs and hassle of licensing transferred to the author.

    Well, you did ask...

  10. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    I find this all very insulting!

    After all, I enjoyed the Eighties! :D

    Oh, sorry, you were expecting a serious and frank exchange of opinions on just how stupid and petty our politicians have become? Don't worry, I'm sure the bod concerned will claim Parliamentary Privelege.

  11. EddieD

    And not a word on the BBC website

    It's really very sad to see how completely slanted their coverage of this debate has been - they are meant to be impartial, but this debate has shown that their impartiality is limited by context.

    1. Alan Firminger

      But

      The BBC drives to issue entertainment.

  12. Skizz
    FAIL

    Clear something up for me....

    If this Clause 43 goes through and money is being paid to this external licensing entity, what happens to the money? Does it just sit in a bank account somewhere? Hidden under a matress? Goes into the CEO "I'm not related to Lord Mandel-Devil-Incarnate-Son honest guv"'s bonus?

    On the one hand, it's awful that the small guy is being shat on from a great height once again, but the scheme is a true evil-genius plan.

  13. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    FAIL

    Tom Watson was also completely wrong.

    "He is proving the point that mixing culture and the power of sharing are new in the internet age," quoth Tom Watson.

    Er, no it isn't. Look up "Musique Concréte"—a technique most people know today as "sampling". All that remixing of pre-recorded sounds? The BBC Radiophonic Workshop were doing it *years* before the Intel 4004, let alone the Synclavier. Delia Derbyshire's 1963 Doctor Who theme was created using this technique. Instead of shunting sample data around a computer, she and her colleagues did it the hard way, using magnetic tape recorders.

    Or take any orchestral work with "variation on a theme by..." in its title. (The theme to "Jonathan Creek" is a good example of this.) It's "orchestral music remixing" and it's been around for *centuries*.

    Copyright laws clearly didn't stifle any of these creations, which were made by obtaining the necessary permissions. (Where applicable. Some of those "Variations on a theme by..." orchestral works were indeed created during the original work's copyright period. Saint-Saëns)

    The claim that it's stifling such creations today is therefore, demonstrably, complete and utter bollocks.

    Most DJs and remixers are more than happy to obtain the requisite permissions. It's not hard to track down the original owners; where doubt exists, you can either create your own alternative mix, or simply do without.

    1. Steve Roper
      Flame

      Not stifling?

      A few years ago, I wanted to make a 3-minute 3D animated video to put on YouTube. The video was originally intended to feature a soundtrack from Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene, published by Polydor Records. So I did the right thing and sent an email to Polydor asking for permission to use the track, stating that the video was purely a creative work and in no wise commercial or intended to make me any money.

      No reply.

      Three repeat emails later, I finally got a terse response stating that if I wished to open negotiations for use of one of their copyrighted tracks, I would need to front up $50,000 US dollars JUST TO OPEN NEGOTIATIONS, let alone what they might want to slug me for actually using the track. For a work I was doing for nothing, from which I intended to make nothing.

      So I had to abandon the project.

      Now when these big publishers make completely unreasonable demands like that it is VERY clear that the intent is to keep popular culture way out of reach of the casual creator and reserve it only for Big Business.

      And you have the gumption to say that copyright being used to stifle creativity is bollocks? Get fucking real.

  14. blackworx
    Badgers

    The BBC...

    ...have always been borderline rabid in protecting their IP, to the point of setting the legal attack dogs on silly wee Doctor Who fanzines etc. How the feck did they marry that long-standing corporate ethos with the pushing of clause 43?

    Well I suppose it *is* the BBC. It's not like anything they do has to make sense these days is it?

  15. Jonny F
    Unhappy

    Fun, but who is for what and who is against what?

    I enjoyed the item and the images, but i left not understanding who is for what and who is against what, and what what is.

    I do not live in the greatest place on Earth and/so have not heard of clause 43 before. Clause 43 of what? I do not live in the UK either :-)

  16. Daniel Wilkie
    Pint

    I must admit though

    The Tory one made me smirk. In a smug manner obviously, because you know, anyone who likes anything the tories suggest is clearly a toff who drinks souls.

    Like me.

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