Letter to Hendrick: Clause 43 Digital Economy Bill

I’ve just sent a letter to my esteemed local MP to encourage him to protect our photographs:

Today sees the second reading of the Digital Economy Bill. I have today become aware of the potentially very damaging consequences of clause 43 of thus bill which:

• removes the right of each individual creator and copyright owner to market their work to the clients they choose, for the uses they choose, at the price they have set
• In so doing it destroys any guarantee of exclusive use, and
• breaks the contractual ties between models, their agencies, property rights holders, photographers and clients, because
• images will be used in ways that rights holders would have forbidden, had they known beforehand
• says that images can be declared orphan after a “diligent search” for the owner without recognising the practical impossibility of such a search
• proposes that images should be licensed at “the market rate” while ignoring the impossibility of determining such a rate for any specific image
• proposes a scheme for managing orphan works that is not limited to orphan works

Perhaps more disturbingly clause 46 allows the Secretary of State to amend the Act by Statutory Instrument. This is a completely unnecessary step which could allow an unscrupulous future Secretary of State to make changes to the law without democratic accountability.

Please vote against this bill.

Possibly related:

• Would you care to answer, Mr. H?
• Korean War over
• Early days…