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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

#111

Post by yarrel »

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)?

In my experience they do pay attention. Mine responded and even helped.

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

#112

Post by woah »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #60
simonh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let's be honest: the set, prop, and wardrobe designers want to use Apple anyway, because the devices are simply more attractive. The company just makes it easy for them.

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

#113

Post by Yhippa »

walterbell wrote: post #99

There was a recent HN thread on the world's highest-grossing photographer, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10689889 . Would this impact Prince's business model?

Wondering the same. This could be the antidote to that.

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

#114

Post by oldmanjay »

knodi123 wrote: post #96
briandear wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not any more unethical than Bacardi showing up at a bar and handing out Bacardi shirts for the staff and free rum to the patrons.

sure it is. the macbook thing would be more analogous to a bar where only one or two drinks were available to customers, and the owners of the bar delegate the decision of which drinks to their bartenders, and bacardi promises tons of perks to the bartenders if bacardi rum is the only beverage available. I don't think it's actually a bad thing, but your analogy was weak. In your scenario, Apple gets much, much more o…

If I'm following your logic correctly, you believe it is less ethical for a company to benefit too much from a promotion, even if that promotion has no apparent ill effects.

Did I mischaracterize your stance?

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

#115

Post by pravda »

onion2k wrote: post #27
Aloisius wrote: post #15

Won't this severely affect movies and television? I imagine a huge number of movies and television shows have at least some piece from a classic designer and I can't imagine Hollywood is going to track down who owns the licensing rights for every set piece, building, article of clothing, etc. ahead of time just to show it in the UK.

If you see a designed object in a movie the brand owner will have paid to put it there. That's why films have all Samsung devices or all Apple devices, all Mercedes or all BMW cars, all Armani wardrobes or all some other designer, and so on. Brands pay millions to be seen on screen. Hollywood knows how to tap every imaginable source of money.

>If you see a designed object in a movie

Not just movies! Looks like Samsung bought placement in a music video. https://youtu.be/lf_wVfwpfp8?t=4

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

#116

Post by knodi123 »

oldmanjay wrote: post #114
knodi123 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure it is. the macbook thing would be more analogous to a bar where only one or two drinks were available to customers, and the owners of the bar delegate the decision of which drinks to their bartenders, and bacardi promises tons of perks to the bartenders if bacardi rum is the only beverage available. I don't think it's actually a bad thing, but your analogy was weak. In your scenario, Apple gets much, much more o…

If I'm following your logic correctly, you believe it is less ethical for a company to benefit too much from a promotion, even if that promotion has no apparent ill effects. Did I mischaracterize your stance?

no, it's less ethical the closer you get to the crime of bribery, "persuading someone to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement."

Clearly this is not legally bribery. But giving out free bacardi and t-shirts at a bar is likely to provide less influence, and less resulting material gain, than giving macbooks to the guys who buy props.

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

#117

Post by oldmanjay »

knodi123 wrote: post #116
oldmanjay wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm following your logic correctly, you believe it is less ethical for a company to benefit too much from a promotion, even if that promotion has no apparent ill effects. Did I mischaracterize your stance?

no, it's less ethical the closer you get to the crime of bribery, "persuading someone to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement." Clearly this is not legally bribery. But giving out free bacardi and t-shirts at a bar is likely to provide less influence, and less resulting material gain, than giving macbooks to the guys who buy props.

You said no, but the concluding sentence relies upon the distinction being the dollar amount of benefit gained. Is the (we'll stipulate) outsized benefit what brings it closer to bribery?

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

#118

Post by knodi123 »

oldmanjay wrote: post #117
knodi123 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it's less ethical the closer you get to the crime of bribery, "persuading someone to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement." Clearly this is not legally bribery. But giving out free bacardi and t-shirts at a bar is likely to provide less influence, and less resulting material gain, than giving macbooks to the guys who buy props.

You said no, but the concluding sentence relies upon the distinction being the dollar amount of benefit gained. Is the (we'll stipulate) outsized benefit what brings it closer to bribery?

If I wanted to have pedantic and irrelevant arguments with strangers where I'm confrontationally forced to justify all of my opinions, I'll hang out on reddit. If you don't like my opinion, then click the down arrow and move on.

Since you appear to enjoy picking fights with strangers, I highly recommend you switch to that site. It's a much better platform for making sure that everyone who disagrees with you knows how stupid you think they are.

Seriously though, I looked at your comment history, and the whole top page is you just arguing with people and putting down their opinions. Yuck.

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

#119

Post by blowski »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #105
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…

>but only items that a court would consider to be a work of art. This doesn't handle the issue of people making claims that things are works of art even if the courts would not agree. Add in the cost to fight it and you end up with a chilling effect. For example, it would be possible for some laptop design company to say that while the guts of the laptop are not primarily a work of art, the case that holds them is. M…

So if I understand what you're saying, it's that since there is no legal definition of art, I could call anything art if I wanted to prevent people taking photos of it. People would be afraid of the court fees, so they would just roll over. Is that a fair summary of your argument?

I think you're right that this could happen, but this line of thought can lead you to doing nothing about anything due to the way it might be abused in the future. In this specific case, I don't understand what specific problem the law is trying to solve so I can't balance the positive and negative effects of the law against each other. However, it does seem to me a narrowly focused law with a reasonable definition of the subject.

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

#120

Post by chimprich »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #104
chimprich wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their only common ground was perhaps dislike and fear of reds (and that turned out very justified). Getting wildly OT now but the atrocities and systematic killings performed by the Nationalists absolutely dwarfed the isolated killings on the Republican side, perhaps by a factor of ten to one.

I'm sorry, who are nationalists that you're talking about? Is it the right civil war? Only thing coming to my mind is ukrainian nationalists, Petlura, that kind of thing.

Ah sorry, I thought you were referring to the Spanish Civil War as discussed by the original poster. I failed to notice the thread had shifted context.
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