UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now

noisycheese

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This is why I have never uploaded any of my images onto a social media website and never will.

I wonder what ramifications this will have for photographers in other nations? Will other governments be tripping over themselves to enact similar legislation?
Given the billions that the entities in silicon valley have available to "grease the wheels" (AKA buy the votes of lawmakers), the answer to that question would seem to be pretty much predetermined.



Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab/
UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now
Everyone = Silicon Valley ad platforms tech companies


By Andrew Orlowski

Have you ever uploaded a photo to Facebook, Instagram or Flickr?

If so, you'll probably want to read this, because the rules on who can exploit your work have now changed radically, overnight.

Amateur and professional illustrators and photographers alike will find themselves ensnared by the changes, the result of lobbying by Silicon Valley and radical bureaucrats and academics. The changes are enacted in the sprawling Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act which received Royal Assent last week, and it marks a huge shift in power away from citizens and towards large US corporations.

How so? Previously, and in most of the world today, ownership of your creation is automatic, and legally considered to be an individual's property. That's enshrined in the Berne Convention and other international treaties, where it's considered to be a basic human right. What this means in practice is that you can go after somebody who exploits it without your permission - even if pursuing them is cumbersome and expensive.

The UK coalition government's new law reverses this human right. When last year Instagram attempted to do something similar, it met a furious backlash. But the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act has sailed through without most amateurs or semi-professionals even realising the consequences.

The Act contains changes to UK copyright law which permit the commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the owner is missing, so-called "orphan works", by placing the work into what's known as "extended collective licensing" schemes. Since most digital images on the internet today are orphans - the metadata is missing or has been stripped by a large organisation - millions of photographs and illustrations are swept into such schemes.

For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work - the user only needs to perform a "diligent search". But since this is likely to come up with a blank, they can proceed with impunity. The Act states that a user of a work can act as if they are the owner of the work (which should be you) if they're given permission to do so by the Secretary of State and are acting as a regulated body.

The Act also fails to prohibit sub-licensing, meaning that once somebody has your work, they can wholesale it. This gives the green light to a new content-scraping industry, an industry that doesn't have to pay the originator a penny. Such is the consequence of "rebalancing copyright", in reality.

What now?
Quite what happens next is not clear, because the Act is merely enabling legislation - the nitty gritty will come in the form of statutory instruments, to be tabled later in the year. Parliament has not voted down a statutory instrument since 1979, so the political process is probably now a formality.

In practice, you'll have two stark choices to prevent being ripped off: remove your work from the internet entirely, or opt-out by registering it. And registration will be on a work-by-work basis.

"People can now use stuff without your permission," explained photo rights campaigner Paul Ellis. "To stop that you have to register your work in a registry - but registering stuff is an activity that costs you time and money. So what was your property by default will only remain yours if you take active steps, and absorb the costs, if it is formally registered to you as the owner."

And right now, Ellis says, there's only one registry, PLUS [1]. Photographers, including David Bailey [2], condemned the Coalition for rushing through the legislation before other registries - such as the Copyright Hub - could sort themselves out.

"The mass of the public will never realise they've been robbed," thinks Ellis. The radical free-our-information bureaucrats at the Intellectual Property Office had already attempted to smuggle orphan works rules through via the Digital Economy Act in 2010, but were rebuffed. Thanks to a Google-friendly Conservative-led administration, they've now triumphed.

Three other consequences appear possible.

One is a barrage of litigation from UK creators - and overseas owners who find their work Hoovered into extended collective licensing programs. International treaties allow a country to be ostracised and punished. The threat has already been made clear from US writers and photographers, who've promised "a firestorm [3]". Reciprocal royalty arrangements can also be suspended, on the basis of "if you steal our stuff, UK, we won't pay you". In addition, a judicial review, based on the premise that the Act gives Minister unconstitutional power over the disposal of private property [4], is not out of the question.

Secondly, the disappearance of useful material from the internet is likely to accelerate - the exact opposite of what supporters wish for. We recently highlighted the case of an aerial photographer who's moving work outside the UK, and we've heard of several who are taking their photos away from the web, and into lockers. The internet is poorer without a diverse creative economy - because creators need legal certainty of property rights.

And finally, there's the macroeconomic consequences for the UK economy.

The notorious 'Google Review' chaired by Ian Hargreaves failed to undertake adequate impact assessments, a giveaway that even the most rabid "copyright reformers" recognise there isn't an economic case to be made for taking everyone's stuff and giving it away.

"There's value in works, and if anybody can exploit them except the person who creates them, then value is transferred to the exploiter," explains Ellis. "This is a massive value transfer out of the UK economy to US tech companies."

Where it will remain, he thinks, because UK tech/media companies - should they appear - almost invariably become US-owned.

Copyright "reformers" of course rarely like to talk about such unpleasant matters - and will steer the conversation away from economic consequences as rapidly as possible. Indeed, the they generally talk using Orwellian euphemisms - like "liberalising" or "rebalancing" copyright. It's rarely presented as an individual's ability to go to market being removed. This is what "copyright reform" looks like in practice.

"It's corporate capitalism," says Ellis. "Ideally you want to empower individuals to trade, and keep the proceeds of their trade. The UK has just lost that."

So while the Twitterati and intelligentsia were ranting away about "Big Content", we've just lost the ability to sell our own content. In other words, you've just been royally f***ed. ®

Links
http://plus.useplus.org/PLUSnews/2/PLUS_Registry.htm
http://thebppa.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/the-copyright-fight-david-bailey-weighs-in/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/12/uk_theft_firestorm_photographers_artists/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/15/con_copyright_judicial_review/
 
I heard about this, I'm not sure if it's a misinterpretation of the law ? seems way too radical a thing to pass just like that
 
Merger of corporate and government interests = fascism. This is Benito Mussolini's definition, and he should know. The people are just slaves to use until they no longer serve a useful purpose. Then they are discarded. So, be a good cog in the machine, and shut up and put up until it's your time to die.

Loss of property rights is a grave one. This forced collectivization will only lead to where collectivization has lead to before - complete collapse of the market. No one in their right mind would post anything anywhere. Images would have to be heavily watermarked, and then uploaded only as tiny thumbnails. "If you want the real image, contact me for details" would be the only way photographers could survive.

I learned to post minimally a few years ago. I submitted a photograph of my wife's violin teacher, who was a man of some stature in the music world. This was a submission to an article on photo.net about musicians. Later, I found that my picture was used to illustrate an biographical article about the man. Had my wife not googled his name out of curiosity, I never would have known that they took my photograph. If you're curious, look up Eugene Kash. If you see a picture of him playing outdoors in the sunshine, that's mine.
 
It seems lawmakers just don't know what to do with the Internet, either they pass extremely restrictive laws as to what you can and can't do with content online, or there's stuff like this. This just goes to reinforce the perception that whatever content found online is free and up for grabs
 
Merger of corporate and government interests = fascism. (...) This forced collectivization (...)

Uh, that would be either-or. And in reality, it is neither - at least unless you intend to accuse the US to be either fascist or communist. While deplorable, and bad enough that the UK would deserve to be kicked out of the EU and UN for violating the Berne convention with criminal intent (the US can at least claim being historically underdeveloped when it comes to their very partial and lopsided interpretation of the same), it comes close to the UK adopting US copyright law - with the radical market libertarian twist of replacing the LoC registry with some privately owned company...
 
Sorry, but this article (and its lingo) sounds too much like a "political hit piece" to take seriously.

Having said that, the "fine print" at Facebook and at Instagram has always said that they own everything, and the fine print at Flickr has always said that you decide whether you retain or wave your rights to the images.
 
One could easily acquire a picture by copying it, changing the name, adding fake meta-data and cropping a few pixels from one side. Wouldn't a complicated and expensive court case be necessary to establish any direct link with the social media original? And "complicated and expensive" means the average person wouldn't even try, or would settle for fifty Euros very quickly.

I don't think the point is that the social-media carry out the image stripping themselves, but that future legislation based on this Act makes it much, much harder to control third-parties doing this.
 
Lets say if someone is aspiring to steal photos online, how could one make money from those photos?

Its a valid question.
 
If you are making a normal website then your stock-photography bill drops to zero and much of the market for specialised custom-shot pictures might disappear too. The quality level need not be very high for a background, or inset, photo/illustration. Alternatively, you "find" enough photos from their original source then you become a stock-library and charge money that way.
 
Lets say if someone is aspiring to steal photos online, how could one make money from those photos?

Its a valid question.

With most photos on the internet you won't make money directly. But if you want to do advertising or publish a book etc you can reduce your costs with free-of-charge photos.
 
I think we are looking at this issue through myopic lenses of the older generation. I talked with my daughter (a Millennial) about sharing her photography (at 13, she is an avid photographer, and uploads her stuff to Instagram and Flickr regularly.) She doesn't care if it gets used beyond her control. To her, a photograph is ephemeral, and if one gets appropriated, she'll take another.

I'm finding that the idea of the photographer as a business person or creative artist is largely lost on the youngest photographers. They are just taking - and sharing - pictures.
 
as one kid said to me recently.. "You're old. You don't get it. Everything is free now. Get a clue."

Your time and creativity is free to any who can leverage it. If it isn't easily accessible some will physically steal it from you. Only fools work, the smart folks steal.


Euthanasia for youths required?
 
Having said that, the "fine print" at Facebook and at Instagram has always said that they own everything, and the fine print at Flickr has always said that you decide whether you retain or wave your rights to the images.


The not-so fine print at Facebook says nothing of the sort. There is nothing to be gained from ownership when they have rights to unlimited use of all content on their platform. Unlimited use, rather than ownership, is the model. Declaring copyright over content posted to Facebook is irrelevant.

RFF, BTW, claims ownership over all content posted here, something which is a very different matter.
 
One could easily acquire a picture by copying it, changing the name, adding fake meta-data and cropping a few pixels from one side. Wouldn't a complicated and expensive court case be necessary to establish any direct link with the social media original? And "complicated and expensive" means the average person wouldn't even try, or would settle for fifty Euros very quickly.

I don't think the point is that the social-media carry out the image stripping themselves, but that future legislation based on this Act makes it much, much harder to control third-parties doing this.

Seems to me that shooting film limits the ability to steal online images. With digital images, file meta-data can be faked and it might be hard to prove who originally created the file (at least without some sort of public key encryption needed to view a file... which should be fairly easy to set up... mmm do I smell business opportunity? :)). On the other hand, if you shoot film, you have a record that can be registered before the file is published to the internet.
 
On the other hand, if you shoot film, you have a record that can be registered before the file is published to the internet.

The agency for registration (there is only one currently, a for-profit company) charges per image, possibly recurring charges annually. Most images online were of digital origin, or the "owners" will not suddenly register them in the next months, then find later that someone else has done so already . . .
 
This thing is quite unbelievable, I honestly thought it was a joke or some internet prank this morning.
 
The agency for registration (there is only one currently, a for-profit company) charges per image, possibly recurring charges annually. Most images online were of digital origin, or the "owners" will not suddenly register them in the next months, then find later that someone else has done so already . . .

It does seem kind of lopsided to require registration and then not set up a government registry...

In the USA, I think you can register a body of work (like a collection of songs, or presumably a collection of photographs) with the Library of Congress.

All this being said, Orphan works can be a real problem and tracking down the real owners of an orphan work can prove difficult or impossible.

--
Bill
 
I think we are looking at this issue through myopic lenses of the older generation. I talked with my daughter (a Millennial) about sharing her photography (at 13, she is an avid photographer, and uploads her stuff to Instagram and Flickr regularly.) She doesn't care if it gets used beyond her control. To her, a photograph is ephemeral, and if one gets appropriated, she'll take another.

I'm finding that the idea of the photographer as a business person or creative artist is largely lost on the youngest photographers. They are just taking - and sharing - pictures.
Um... Yes... She's 13. She's not trying to earn a living from ANYTHING (I hope). If she is not brought up to respect the rights of those who create worthwhile pictures... words... music... software... hardware... Well, why should she value anything? Everything is free on the internet; and what's not free on the internet, you, her father, pay for.

This is a dangerous world picture.

Cheers,

R.
 
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