
UK Government passes “Instagram Act” - choult
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab/
======
swombat
Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

If you pass more stringent copyright laws, people roast you on a pitchfork for
fucking creators over by restricting how they can use other people's works.

If you pass looser copyright laws, people roast you on a pitchfork for fucking
creators over by not restricting how others can use their work.

In such a situation, where the geek world is the first to shout abuse at
politicians the minute they make any changes, it's no surprise that the
smoother-talking Disney lobbyists win.

As a community, we have got to get our shit together and start having a clear
position. For myself, I think any step that weakens copyright is good at this
point, so I think this is a great move. It opens up a huge realm of creative
activity.

Now they just need to apply this to music, movies and text too.

~~~
mtgx
Here's what the position should be. You're free to use other people's stuff
that appears online, but not for commercial purposes.

Putting someone's picture (that happens to be on the web, publicly available)
in a post on a site, where you happen to have ads does _not_ count as "using
_your_ image" for commercial purposes. Putting your image _in an ad_ would.

My point is that you shouldn't be able to just claim having copyright over
someone's work, and then profiting from it as your own. I shouldn't be able to
take the HD version of Iron Man 3, and then sell it to my local cinema. That's
as far as copyright should go.

~~~
pessimizer
>Putting someone's picture (that happens to be on the web, publicly available)
in a post on a site, where you happen to have ads does not count as "using
your image" for commercial purposes.

To me it does. I don't understand the operational difference between putting
someone's image within whatever div has been designated the "ad" div or
outside of it, other than location. If I don't understand it, surely teams of
lawyers in opposition can create complicated rationales that justify any
parties' usage of any other parties' work based on how much money the first
party has to spend on lawyers.

~~~
pyre
The difference is that if someone's image is in the advertisement, there is an
implicit message that this person uses/endorses whatever the advertisement is
proposing. Whether or not this difference is material is an exercise for the
reader.

------
yuliyp
This sounds like it's orphan works legislation. Apparently The Register feels
as though the standard created for what constitutes an orphan work is too low.
Can anyone who understands UK law actually clarify what it actually means? The
article reads as way too sensationalist to feel credible here.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The Register (and this author especially) are _rabidly_ pro-IP in a way that
you'd think would be out of place on a tech site.

As far as I can tell, they're against orphan works laws in any shape or form.
Whether they're taking that stance to protect the semi-professional
photographer as they seem to be claiming is another matter.

Any (possibly valid) criticisms of the actual form of this law (and similar
outrage over one in France) seems to be incidental to the fact that they don't
want any weakening of IP to occur at all, ever.

------
andybak
Note that the author of that piece - Andrew Orlowski - is a man with an axe to
grind with regard to copyright reform.

This is a significant factor to consider. Read his other work.

~~~
AlexHamilton
The Register is also rabidly hostile to Wikipedia - and I find it hard not to
leap to uncharitable interpretations of their motives (as paid journalists)

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oneandoneis2
I don't understand why this is being represented as "Your pics can now be
stolen" - a key proviso is that they have to do "a diligent search".

Google Images (for one) allows you to search by uploading a photo, and I can't
remember the last time I was able to "beat" it by downloading a photo that it
couldn't identify the source of.

If you're a pro and want your photos to stay yours, put it where Google (or
whoever) can see it and it if somebody steals it, you have every right to sue
them for failing to do their due diligence.

Am I missing something?

~~~
Silhouette
_Am I missing something?_

Yes: not all copyrighted works are freely available on the Internet. Indeed,
it is the ones that are not that are probably the most important to protect in
terms of the copyright holder's legal rights, and as a matter of practical
reality, putting such things on a publicly available site might substantially
reduce their actual value.

That tends to lead into the "so just register it with my central archive
instead" argument, which effectively reverses the automatic granting of
copyright that has been established for many years now and imposes a
potentially expensive burden on exercising your basic legal rights under
copyright law.

------
polshaw
To be clear this covers all creative works, not just images. Orphaned works
will not become free, they will require a paid licence. I'm not sure what to
think of it.

Bill documents — Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013:
[http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/enterpriseandreg...](http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/enterpriseandregulatoryreform/documents.html)

Orphan Works impact assessment: [http://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-
assessments/IA12-0...](http://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-
assessments/IA12-025B.pdf)

------
chewxy
I do not get the outcry over this. This is a Good Thing with capital letters.

We as a whole species are currently producing more content than the sum of
humanity prior to the 20th century per day every day. Content production has
become so cheap, in fact just the other day I wondered if "from each his own
ability; to each according to his need" can be rightfully applied yet.

Sure, you say there are moral issues of profiting off the backs off someone's
hard works. But such a law allows you to also do the same.

You might say for example, that you don't intend to do the same. Good on ya
mate. Then go profit off your own work, and also allow others to profit off
your work! This is not a pie that is finite in size. If someone does not
intend to profit off their own work anyway, what is it to them then that
someone else profits off their work?

That said, I think attribution is still a requirement as we enter the age of
digital communism

~~~
timthorn
It's not just profit. Imagine taking a photograph that then gets used to
promote a political party that campaigns against your beliefs - you might be
happy with that, but I wouldn't be.

~~~
Silhouette
While I think you have a valid point, I think it's also useful to separate
copyright (which is fundamentally an economic tool, hence the "limited"
duration) from other reasons to restrict copying or redistributing material by
law, such as protecting privacy rights, trade secrets, genuine national
security concerns, etc. Assuming copyright law is the correct tool to guard
against these other things, and against the kind of misrepresentation you're
talking about, seems to muddy the waters and thus to dilute reasonable but
distinct arguments in favour of either copyright or the other protections.

------
mcintyre1994
I don't understand how it is so difficult to get copyright to work on the
internet, it seems like this problem should have been solved by a licensing
structure like we see with GPL etc.

Make everything on the web available by default for personal use, but not
commercial use. Then have 2 licenses: No, this can't be used for personal use
(eg Netflix) and Yes, this can be used for commercial use too. Both should
have a modifier for Source must be attributed. Put the creator in control and
get out the way. Of course we should allow more fine-grained licenses like we
see for source code etc, but the two simple licenses should cover most use
cases I think.

~~~
zalew
Most of what you propose is covered by creative commons. Sadly, in practice,
CC is a shitty deal for photography in general.

~~~
pkhamre
Why?

~~~
zalew
These rants cover the issues pretty well

[http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/creative-
co...](http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/creative-commons-and-
why-youre-getting-railed/)

[http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/creative-
co...](http://thispicturesucks.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/creative-commons-and-
the-case-of-the-hotel-pool-sperm/)

<http://www.powazek.com/2004/02/000372.html>

~~~
mcintyre1994
I guess I was simplifying the issue too much. It could work with adjustments,
but I think one of them might be a license modifier for "but contact me
first", and due to the reasons you've presented, maybe that should even be a
default. That doesn't really remove the friction we have now, and is probably
too restrictive.

We need something more granular that people can use, and I'm not at all
convinced that exists. Hmm.

~~~
zalew
> a license modifier for "but contact me first", and due to the reasons you've
> presented, maybe that should even be a default

now it's the same as "all rights reserved. joe@example.com", and it is the
current default.

------
killermonkeys
It is impossible to judge the impact from this rant but I can certainly say
that ownership of intellectual property is not a human right. Nor does the
Berne Convention hold that it is a human right. Can we please ensure that
every human being has the right to life, security, and liberty before we throw
in the right to claim the creation and ownership of intellectual property
without registration and justification.

------
k-mcgrady
This sounds terrible. First of all the use of 'diligent search' in the
legislation. What constitutes a diligent search? The worst bit however is that
if this turns up nothing the user of the 'orphan' work now has the ability to
become the owner of it AND license it to others. As the site says "This gives
the green light to a new content scraping industry, an industry which doesn't
have to pay the originator a penny." It seems like the government tried to do
something good here and really didn't think it through.

~~~
voyou
The user of an orphaned work can't become the owner - the legislation
specifically prohibits granting users of orphaned works exclusive rights.
Because of this, sublicencing seems like a non-issue, because anyone who could
sublicense an orphaned work from a user of that work, could just directly
license it from whatever body licenses orphaned works.

------
_k
So Google UK is now allowed to use everyone's photographs (not just
thumbnails) and use those photographs to sell ads next to it. How is that
right ?

It only applies to orphan works but you can easily and in an anonymous way
strip out the metadata.

And companies like Google could take it one step further. All they have to do
is start a LLC in the UK for the Google image search part of its business, go
to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, ... take all the photos, strip the metadata, say
it was someone else who must have done it, make a lot of money.

~~~
Silhouette
_So Google UK is now allowed to use everyone's photographs (not just
thumbnails) and use those photographs to sell ads next to it. How is that
right ?_

Google Image Search is already doing something awfully close to that, and the
legality of doing so is surely going to be disputed in court sooner or later.

They appear to be bandwidth leaching in a way that has been considered poor
netiquette since forever, too. In fact, in an earlier court case in the US the
fact that they weren't actually hosting the material themselves even though to
a viewer it would look like they were was a key point for their defence.

------
kbutler
"For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the widespread
commercial exploitation of unidentified work"

Someone really needs to study the history of copyright.

------
Vivtek
Man, I'm torn here. Making orphaned works public-domain is really a positive
move, but the law doesn't appear to be using a great definition of orphaned if
this article can be believed.

It does beg a question, though: I don't live by photography (otherwise my
children would be starving) but if I were, wouldn't I put my name and contact
into any metadata?

~~~
buro9
> wouldn't I put my name and contact into any metadata

And then things like CloudFlare+ might optimise the image discarding meta-data
during compression of the image, and a person solely relying on the image will
not be able to find the creator.

The only option will be to visibly watermark the image with the creator name.

\+ I'm not sure if CloudFlare does do this, but _something_ may optimise the
image and discard the EXIF or other meta-data.

~~~
polshaw
Watermarks are often removed, via cropping or photoshop. The only solid option
of protecting your work is to add it to a copyright registry, which isn't
likely to be free.

------
jdmitch
It sounds like the article is saying that many photos will be automatically
"orphaned"... Looks like there would be a ripe opportunity for an app (or at
least a new feature from Instagram) that registers the IP for your photos
automatically... can't be that hard!

~~~
mmcnickle
Registries for photo copyright already exist.

~~~
seabee
Online registries, even! Though unless you're semi-professional you're
probably not willing to pay the prices to do so:

<http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/services/price_list>

------
ianox
The article mentions: "The Act contains changes to UK copyright law which
permit the commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the
owner is missing"

Does your username in the URL e.g. instagram.com/username, constitute
"information identifying the owner"?

------
smegel
The big issue to me is how it applies to photos of people and advertising. If
your friend takes a photo of you then dumps it on imgur...and a week later you
appear on billboards selling something objectionable...what are your rights?

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jobigoud
In practice, does this apply only to pics created by UK citizens ?

If yes, how can they identify the citizenship of the author since we are
talking about orphan works ?

If not and it applies to every pics, how does it not conflict with other
legislations ?

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Osmium
Would using a reverse image search engine qualify as a "diligent search"?

In principle, I think a law like this in regards to truly orphaned works is
not a bad thing, as long as the penalties for abuse are proper (e.g. news
programmes trying to credit "YouTube" for something they've ripped off someone
else, or newspapers stealing someone's Twitter photos -- where it's entirely
clear how to contact the person who owns the photo).

------
drcube
I don't understand how someone can lay copyright claim to a work they didn't
create?

I'm all for weakening copyrights. But this seems like weakening it only for
the average person, while allowing huge organizations to scoop up any
"unclaimed" work as their own -- from which they can then extract rents, even
from the actual creator.

Am I misreading this?

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wtracy
So, some third party strips your work of contact information such that due
diligence does not turn up any way of finding you, and redistributes it. Can
this third party be in any way legally liable for lost income or other
damages?

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6d0debc071
If you make a diligent search a requirement, then the incentive is to make
such a search impossible to perform effectively; obfuscate the ownership if
you can.

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pla3rhat3r
Um, so in other words stop posting stuff on the internet. Period.

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evoloution
Adobe Flash will start becoming popular again :)

------
pasevin
We are in the twisted age when a 16 year old, farts in his bedroom and someone
buys his ideas for millions of dollars. Or every looser has a mobile phone in
his pocket and hopes one day to take "THAT" image which will bring him glory
and fame, then we have miserable creatives, who remix everything they can find
on the internet and hope that this will make them valuable too. Online
community is suffering from hard case of schizophrenia, as at the same time
they are consumers and creators. They want to take, but don't want to give. So
corporations just use that to their advantage. I would suggest calm the f*
down, and decide what you are good at and make money from it, not hope you
will one day make it big from being in a right place in a right time. And if
you give more than you ask, humanity will only benefit.

