The Digital Economy Bill

Article from CopyrightAction.com

Note: This deals mostly with just the photography element - I know the bill is a lot more complex than this - read the comments also for info re Flickr

I'm not happy with the proposed bill. I'm trying to keep a level head about it but have written to my MP with the template letter and a personal note. I'm still waiting on a response to my letter about asthmatics and prescription charges and I blogged about that a while ago so I'm not holding my breath yet - I think it took almost 5 months to get a response the last time.

I post my photos on Flickr, on here and on another, more personal blog site.

Because of this, I should be easy to contact. On flickr, anyone wanting to use my photos (not that I think it would happen, but as an example...) could set up a flickr account and contact me that way (I keep my yahoo email private). On here, they could set up an account and email me. On Blogger, they could set up an account and email me.

But will they do that? If the email address is not visable, will they just say that they can't contact the owner? I hope not but I could see it happening. And why? Because, from the way I read the bill, it's up to the photographer to first of all find if it's being used or not and if it is, it's up to the photographer to prove that they weren't contacted. And if the photographer does prove ownership, an agency gets a slice of royalties, then the government gets a slice of royalties and finally the photographer gets royalties.

Gordon Brown is probably rubbing his hands at the potential revenue. This is incredibly unfair on anyone who has stood in awful weather conditions, paid for courses and invested time and money in photography.

My photos are MINE. I choose to show them. I don't earn any money off them - I'm not interested in selling them. How dare the government try to introduce a bill which could take my property off me and fatten their coiffers - because that's what it is. I honestly don't think that many companies will bother too hard to find the owner unless it's blatantly obvious who the image belongs to and if they are caught will just go "ooops, silly me".

There are some absolutely amazing photographers on flickr who haven't used the site for a long time but their images are still there. Does this make them orphan works? It shouldn't. They still belong to that person whether you can contact them or not.

It's bad enough getting suspicious looks from people because I have a "professional" camera without this.

I'm sick to death of photography being a battle all the time. As the template letter said, if this were a motor car, this bill is basically saying that if the number plate is missing, it's ok to claim use of it. And if this were a motor car and they tried to pass this bill, they would be laughed at. But because a photo is "just a digital image", they think it doesn't matter.

Well, it matters to me and lots of people like me. They wouldn't do this to songs, they wouldn't do it to paintings, they wouldn't do it to writing, so why do it to photographs? As far as I'm concerned, it's all expressions of creativity and they either introduce this bill for all paintings, books, writing and photos, or for none of them.

(sorry, got a bit ranty towards the end there!)