Slashdot Mirror
UK Passes "Instagram Act"
kodiaktau writes "The UK govt passed the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act which effectively makes so-called 'orphaned' content posted on social media sites public domain. Corporations now only need to have made a "diligent search" to find the owner of the content before use. From the article: '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 organization - millions of photographs and illustrations are swept into such schemes.'"
a) find image you want to use at site X
b) have someone strip the the image of identifying information and repost it at site Y
c) discover image at site Y lacking traceable information
d) do "due dilligence" based on image from site Y
e) declare image from site Y as 'orphaned'
f) PROFIT
How is it possible that copyright not only keeps being extended to prevent works of corporations from entering the public domain, but now other laws start stripping rights of the public for their own works for the benefit of corporations?
With some luck, Google's "search similar images" function may make that scheme much harder
It's almost like you think corporations (that have interest in declaring the item "abandoned") will do a diligent search. Google "search similar images" function will be helpful if the searcher is trying to find the owner.
And if someone falsely declares an image to be "abandoned", what are the penalties, I wonder? Would the owner have to sue to recover his or her image ownership?
The abuse possibilities (for someone who has a legal department at ready) are practically endless!
No...it means don't allow anyone else in the world to find/scan/copy your work and post it online or they own it. You don't have to ever post something online yourself to be affected by this.
Well, the point is not to find the real copyright owner. The idea is to NOT find the copyright owner. "due diligence" means a lot of things if you have enough money to pay lawyers.
Shouting "Anybody here knows who this belongs to?" from behind your desk might be enough (again IF you have the right amount to pay lawyers. Don't try this if you are not a company.)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If it's not worth enough to go to the bother of registering it then it's not worth adding to the legal quagmire that is default copyright.
The problem with this is that a picture I take might be worth something, but that worth is less than what it would cost me in time/effort to get the money out of it (as opposed to an established publisher or news organization), so I don't. This legislation basically lets those established players hoover up that stuff and get money out of it, but without ever having to compensate the author.