Copyright: time to change the laws

[AndCity]

I thought some of you might be interested in reading this and maybe it might start a discussion. I'm not advocating any of it, I consider myself just the messenger!

BBC News - Copyright: time to change the laws?

[Sime]

This is interesting.... Is Stuart Franklin suggesting that people can take your images and use them wherever they like, as long as they're not charging?

"We have no problem at all with dissemination and actively encourage students and young people to engage with our photography. What we don't encourage is pilfering for profit of our work"

But only if you're a student or a young person? Err?

Interesting.... What are your views? (Everyone)

[OsmosisStudios]

Sounds like it Sime. His argument seems to be that, as long as no money is exchanging hands, a photo should be public domain.

While I'm a little aghast at the proposition, i could very well see it be put into law, with one major issue added: bylines. Especially online, I could see how it would be legal for someone to use a photo, provided they are not making money, as long as they include a byline back to the original creator.

That then raises the issue of what is making money. In most peoples eyes (and likely the goal of law) it would be someone directly profiting from the images. It could (rather easily) be argued that if an image is on a site, and that site has some kind of ads, then the image is being used for profit (as part of a money-making website). That would then be illegal.

As far as im concerned the british copyright laws are about as straightforward and logical as a hooting gibbon, and as such I tend to ignore most of their politics provided it doesn't affect ME (over here in the colonies )

[Murtasma]

Can we throw out patents and trademarks while we're at it?

[zappo]

O.K that's actually a hard thing. I definitly think the copyright laws have to be renewed because times have changed so much, and the laws reflect a state of the world that simply doesn't exist anymore.

What Evans proposes sounds so simply:
- If you want to download the image and use it as a desktop background it's free (Yes, right now that's theft)
- If you want to print the image on a shirt and sell the shirt you have to pay

The problem is, there are a lot of cases this will work fine. When you work for a newspaper i.e. nothing will change. But the world isn't black and white and there will be a lot of cases where it's not clear if this is free use or not.

Here is an example for you: If your client is a private person (i.e a wedding) and he's not going to sell the shot, he can do what he want's with your photos. Especially a lot of things that he would have to pay for extra right now, like reproducing them himself.

[AndCity]

I think it's such a grey area there will never ever be any hard and fast way of protecting your images if you put them on the internet. All you can do is keep the best ones off it I suppose. But... we all like to show off our images... so it's a Catch 22 situation.

Personally, I'd be more than happy for a student to use anything I took if it helped with their studies but and there is always the big BUT... how can you be sure they are legitimate? An acknowledgement would keep most amateurs happy but for those who make their living as a photographer it must be really frustrating.

[Mr Guy]

Originally Posted by zappo

O.K that's actually a hard thing. I definitly think the copyright laws have to be renewed because times have changed so much, and the laws reflect a state of the world that simply doesn't exist anymore.

What Evans proposes sounds so simply:
- If you want to download the image and use it as a desktop background it's free (Yes, right now that's theft)
- If you want to print the image on a shirt and sell the shirt you have to pay

The problem is, there are a lot of cases this will work fine. When you work for a newspaper i.e. nothing will change. But the world isn't black and white and there will be a lot of cases where it's not clear if this is free use or not.

Here is an example for you: If your client is a private person (i.e a wedding) and he's not going to sell the shot, he can do what he want's with your photos. Especially a lot of things that he would have to pay for extra right now, like reproducing them himself.

And there's your problem with the laws. When people don't understand technology, laws quickly become the murky playground of lawyers and other perverts. We have to invent such weird and bizarre justifications that ignore what's actually happening to keep things they way they may have worked if the technology never had existed.

Currently, it's really pretty impossible to say that keeping a copy of someone else's work, obtained digitally is copyright infringement, at least for any set of laws for any country that I've read. The movie industry and music industry worldwide is trying to make people believe that receiving copyrighted materials is infringement, when in fact no laws I can find are written that way. In fact, the only time that concept has been directly tested in court, it was directly spoken against by the most infamous technical genius the world has ever known: Mr Fred McFeely Rogers, in the case of Sony Corp vs Universal City Studios.

The issue, see, is that if you distribute your works, others are legally allowed to receive them from you. If they can receive it, they can retain a copy, a copy that you initiated by sending it. It's no different if you broadcast it over the airwaves, broadcast it on the radio, send it out on the internet, or upload it to Flickr. You created the copy for distribution. You can prevent someone else from making a copy. You can keep anyone else from distributing it. You can't keep them from keeping their own copy once they see it, because you (or an agent authorized to act on your behalf) legally created the copy that they have.

[Swisstony10]

Originally Posted by Mr Guy

..laws quickly become the murky playground of lawyers and other perverts..

Thanks - that (brilliant) comment just caused me to blow hot tea down my nose!