Kill Bill

Following a strong grassroots campaign to raise awareness among photographers of the potential threat to their livelihood, I’ve just followed the advice given at stop43.org.uk and written to my MP on the subject.  For those of you either unaware of the Digital Economy Bill or unsure of what it’s about, head over to the stop43 site.  It really is important that any photographer reading this gets in touch with their representative in the House of Commons to push for them to raise a question when it next comes up for debate.

You can either email your MP through www.writetothem.com or, if you can, it’s better to write a proper letter as then they have to reply to you individually rather than just hitting the delete key.

I’ve included a copy of my letter below that is a minced-up version of the well-written text from the stop43 site and my own style of writing.  Feel free to copy and tweak the text before sending your own letter.

Dear xxx,

This is the first time that I’ve ever felt the need to write to a politician before but there is currently a bill being passed through Parliament that is very likely to affect countless photographers throughout the country.

Until now, if someone found one of my photographs and wanted to use it commercially, they couldn’t without first asking me. Clause 43 of the UK Digital Economy Bill changes this by allowing the use of “Orphan Works” i.e. photographs, illustrations and other artworks whose owners cannot be found.

The proposed Clause 43 says that if someone finds one of my photographs, wants to use it and decides that they can’t trace me, they’re free to do whatever they like with it after paying a small fee to a UK Government-appointed “licensing body”. Any photographer affected will more than likely never know unless he/she happens to find it being used in this way. If they did manage to find it, only then would they be able to claim some money.

Even worse than this is that Clause 43 also introduces “Extended Collective Licensing”.

This means that if someone wanted to use one of my images, they don’t have to actually approach me. They could go to a UK Government-appointed “collecting society” and ask them instead. In this way, they’d pay an arbitrary fee and be able to do whatever they like with my photograph. This totally removes any value from the image. If I have an exclusive picture, why would anyone come to me for a fair price when they can go straight to the “collecting society” and pay a standard lower rate?

Can you imagine if this was talking about something commercially manufactured like cars? If I saw one for sale for £20,000, I could either pay the owner or choose to pay a Government body a nominal fee instead. Finally, the car’s owner would only get paid if they knew whom to approach to get the money from.

It really is a terribly thought out bill and I strongly request that you consider my concerns when the bill comes up for discussion or vote.

Yours sincerely,

Leon Neal

The address to send your letters to is;

(First name) (Second name) MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Now get on it, peeps..

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 8:44 pm. It is filed under Thoughts and tagged with digital economy bill, law, legal, leon neal, leonneal, media, orphan works, photographers, photography rights, stop43. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.