New UK Image Copyright Law Legalises Nicking Photos Off the Internet

twist

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The UK's Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act has been passed, putting controversial new copyright laws regarding what's known as “orphan works” into place for photos put online. The changes mean that if there's no clear identifying meta data in images, anyone can use and sub-license them and the owners have little recourse to complain........

New UK Image Copyright Law Legalises Nicking Photos Off the Internet | Gizmodo UK
 
The UK’s Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act has been passed, putting controversial new copyright laws regarding what’s known as “orphan works” into place for photos put online. The changes mean that if there’s no clear identifying meta data in images, anyone can use and sub-license them and the owners have little recourse to complain........

New UK Image Copyright Law Legalises Nicking Photos Off the Internet | Gizmodo UK

"Given that meta data is routinely stripped when uploading shots to many social networks, the changes to the law seem designed to make nicking everyone’s Instagram photos entirely legal."

Exactly!
 
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I've been reading about this for a while. It really is rubbish that it legitimises something which was already common practice. I've had a couple of pictures nicked off Flickr but there's not much you can do.
I expect to see companies setting up, wholesale ripping metadata off images grabbed from the Internet and then Reselling them as orphan works. Really poor.
 
"I didn't see any proof it belonged to someone else"
"Oh that's OK"
As has been pointed out this could break copyright and royalty agreements with many countries and ....
 
...when does it come into effect? - I'm quite keen to get my Flickr updated with some decent images :devil:
 
Isn't it a couple of weeks? Can't quite remember, all I can say is a polite **** You to our current government and also the same to Social Media especially Instagram for this whole matter, there's just 2 options now for us, either don't upload or include a huge watermark which will put people off of seeding the images.
 
Isn't it a couple of weeks? Can't quite remember, all I can say is a polite **** You to our current government and also the same to Social Media especially Instagram for this whole matter, there's just 2 options now for us, either don't upload or include a huge watermark which will put people off of seeding the images.

That's basically my thoughts too - if you put it on the internet then expect it to be stolen :(
As a hobbyist I'm not out of pocket if someone likes my pictures enough to nick them - I'd prefer if they asked but that would be silly to expect in the Wild West Web but I really feel for pros who rely on their pictures for a living and need to advertise.
It's all well and good us mucking about with cameras and taking the odd good shot but where will people go when they need a set of quality images and all the pros have been forced out of business because there is no market for stock photography?

It seems to me to be a fundamental change in copyright from "you own what you make" to "you own what you can prove is yours if you can afford the lawyers". Finders keepers ? - thanks very much govt.


I will, I've signed others before the bill was passed but there is no harm in continuing to object.
 
It seems to me to be a fundamental change in copyright from "you own what you make" to "you own what you can prove is yours if you can afford the lawyers". Finders keepers ? - thanks very much govt.

Well I suspect it's always been the case of "you own what you can prove is yours if you can afford the lawyers" but the difference is in the past it was extremely difficult for someone to get a usable sample of your work without going direct to the photographer for a hi res sample - not so hard in a world where people upload hi res images to flickr and if it's used for web work it doesn't even need to be a hi res sample
 

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