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UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

arstechnica.com

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Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#51

Post by blowski »

coldtea wrote: post #49
blowski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which bit of EU law? I figure if I can understand this in more detail, then I could write to my MP. EDIT: Seems this is actually to align EU and UK law: > The repeal of s. 52 was brought in by statute - by section 74 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. The rationale for the repeal was that UK law was incompatible with the EU following the Court of Justice of the European Union's decision in Flos v Semer…

> Which bit of EU law? I figure if I can understand this in more detail, then I could write to my MP. I thought this ("writing to my congressman/MP") was an American thing. In real life, does anybody actually expect them to pay attention, and not directly toss all these mails in the dustbin (or e-dustbin)?

Depends on your MP. I have a pretty good local MP (David Amess, Southend West) and he does represent constituent views in Parliament. Of course, whether the government will in turn listen to him is questionable, but it's still a good course of action.

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#52

Post by simonh »

dogma1138 wrote: post #7
roywiggins wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll end up being enforced on publication, I'd guess. So if you photograph an object and publish the picture, someone can come after you for money. Or, in this case, if you published a book last year, they can sue you for distributing it. Which is insane, but that's what you get with retroactive copyright extensions. Nobody actually cares whether you took the photograph, it's whether you published it.

Well the question is then does it cover all photographs or only those in which the item is the subject. E.g model on a chair is ok chair on its own is not. Also what makes an item a classical designer item? Do ikea chairs count as designer goods now since they come with an image stock photo of some middle age white guy with a Nordic name?

The mention of 'designer' objects is a distraction. It's about any object for which the design is protected by copyright.

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#53

Post by blowski »

RobertoG wrote: post #17

What I miss in this kind of articles is more details in how this kind of laws are cooked. They say "the UK government", OK, but who in the UK government, and who is really behind. Not that we don't know, but making the process explicit would be helpful.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/transitional-arr...

> 1. Section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) limits the term of copyright protection for industrially exploited artistic works to 25 years. The Government had previously consulted on how and when to implement the repeal of section 52 CDPA and made a decision to have a transitional period of 5 years from April 2015. This meant that the repeal of section 52 would have come into effect in April 2020 and existing stock which had been made or imported prior to this date would have been unaffected by the repeal.

> 2. However, the compatibility of these arrangements with EU law was challenged by way of a judicial review and the Government decided to reconsider the issue, as announced on the Government’s website on 23 July 2015. This consultation covers the areas which are now being considered as part of the repeal of section 52 CDPA.

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#55

Post by DanBC »

pwm wrote: post #54

I would love to see a statistical analysis on how many times an average citizen, assuming zero maliciousness, breaks laws like this unknowingly in his/her lifetime. It wouldn't surprise me at all that literally everyone breaks one at one point.

England has civil and criminal law. I'm not sure what the US equivalents are.

When you break civil law the wronged party can take you to court and try to get damages. There's no chance of prison or conviction or criminal record. When you break criminal law the police get involved, you're arrested and charged with an offence, you're prosecuted, and if convicted you're sentenced.

For copyright stuff it's almost entirely civil. It tips into criminal law if you do it as part of trading. So, if I download a movie it's civil. If I upload a movie it's still civil. If I download a movie, and burn it to DVDs and sell those at a market it's now criminal.

UK copyright law is bafflingly bad. If someone wants a strong example of over-powerful lobbying in law creation the copyright laws are a great example.

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#56

Post by iand »

gambiting wrote: post #29

I mean.....it already sort of happens in the US. Every single TV show censors out any brand names, car logos, restaurant names out of fear of I don't know what. Being sued I guess? It's ridiculous.

Usually it's to avoid accidentally promoting a product that competes with a sponsor or advertiser.

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#57

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

justincormack wrote: post #38
RobertoG wrote: post #17

What I miss in this kind of articles is more details in how this kind of laws are cooked. They say "the UK government", OK, but who in the UK government, and who is really behind. Not that we don't know, but making the process explicit would be helpful.

The UK is bringing some copyright law in line with the EU, eg they just ruled that reproductions of out of copyright pictures do not create a new copyright, unlike what some museums like to tell you. This might be related, certainly design is more protected in eg France than in the UK, not sure though.

> they just ruled that reproductions of out of copyright pictures do not create a new copyright

That's great news. Do you have a link?

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#58

Post by JupiterMoon »

blowski wrote: post #48

OK, seems like a storm in a teacup. The items covered by this ruling ('industrially exploited artistic works') are artistic items that have been reproduced more than 50 times. They are already under copyright for 25 years, but due to a judicial review based on EU law, that section has been repealed so they are now covered by the same copyright as 2D artistic works (such as paintings). Therefore, it's not everything t…

Unless one of your user submitted photos of an Apple laptop happens to contain their desk chair that you don't notice is a designer chair. The first you may know about this is the copyright troll that purchased the rights to images of that chair sending you a speculative invoice after their chair recognising bot has trawled your blog. You might when you reflect on this hazard decide that your blog on Apple laptops is not worth the risk. This is an example of a chilling effect.

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#59

Post by timthorn »

blowski wrote: post #53
RobertoG wrote: post #17

What I miss in this kind of articles is more details in how this kind of laws are cooked. They say "the UK government", OK, but who in the UK government, and who is really behind. Not that we don't know, but making the process explicit would be helpful.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/transitional-arr... > 1. Section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) limits the term of copyright protection for industrially exploited artistic works to 25 years. The Government had previously consulted on how and when to implement the repeal of section 52 CDPA and made a decision to have a transitional period of 5 years from April 2015. This meant tha…

So that implies that there is currently in force copyright protection for "industrially exploited artistic works" and that the change is to extend the period of protection.

Given that there is not currently an issue with needing a licence to include a protected object in a photo, I'd like to understand what other changes are coming to make this happen - or if Ars has misunderstood the issue.

Re: UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own

#60

Post by MagnumOpus »

simonh wrote: post #50
mryan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you see a designed object in a movie the brand owner will have paid to put it there. While paid product placement does exist and is widespread, this statement isn't correct. There are many examples of organic product placement, where the set/costume designer uses a particular product without any financial incentive.

In fact for example Apple has confirmed repeatedly for many years that they don't pay for product placement.

They do pay, but they pay in hardware.

They have dedicated staff to promote product placement and according to a Hollywood movie maker, "Apple won’t pay to have their products featured, but they are more than willing to hand out an endless amount of computers, iPads, and iPhones".

It is actually a very unethical practice if you think about it in monetary terms. Rather than paying the film company above the table like ethical companies usually do, they outright bribe the prop department staff by giving each of them gifts worth thousands of dollars for preferential product placement.

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