Earlier this year a number of photographers campaigned succesfully to stop Clause 43 of the Digital Economy Bill, which, as I wrote at the time “would have made many of our photographs orphan works and easy game for commercial publishers wanting a free ride on photographers backs.”
As I said at the time, it would be back, and it is – and there was a good post about it by Jeremy Nicholl on his Russian Photos blog last month. A few days later The Guardian (who should have known better) published an article by Stephen Edwards, suggesting that the actions of photographers had effectively sealed up the BBC archives “in which photographs either form no part (radio), or in which they are of relatively small importance (television)” and calling for what he describes as “a simple, fair and equitable solution” by the government re-instating this provision.
Unfortunately he is wrong. Clause 43 was neither fair nor equitable, as it failed to provide recompense for those who had produced the material while it would have enabled commercial organisations (and the BBC as a commercial organisation) to profit from their work.
Photographers aren’t opposed to all change, but they are in favour of changes that recognise and appropriately reward the creators of material. Legislation that did that would be welcome.
And as I recounted in New Thinking on Copyright, the photographers who mounted the campaign that played the largest part in stopping Clause 43 came up with some proposals that could for the basis for a new copyright law, and there have been other suggestions that would also solve the problem in a way that gave proper consideration to creator’s rights.
More recently, Jeremy Nicholl has published another article on his blog,
Exposed: The UK Orphan Works Covert Propagandist which lets us know what The Guardian should have made clear about its author when it published the piece.
Another project that might be worth looking at is MILE (Metadata Image Library Exploitation) which aims to promote European cultural heritage and make digital art more accessible by improving metadata. On the information page of its Orphan Works site it has a short explanation of orphan works, which makes clear the importance providing income to artists and artists’ estates.
Certainly the last thing that should happen is the kind of rush into inappropriate legislation such as Clause 43 (rumoured to have been dictated to Peter Mandelson by one of his billionaire friends in that villa in Corfu.)