[Wikimedia-l] UK.Gov passes Instagram Act

[Craig Franklin]

If the Register hates it, that usually indicates to me that it is a
fantastic idea.
On 02/05/2013 1:07 PM, "shi zhao" <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:

> see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab/
>
> The Act contains changes to UK copyright law which permit the
> commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the
> owner is missing, so-called "orphan works", by placing the work into
> what's known as "extended collective licensing" schemes. Since most
> digital images on the internet today are orphans - the metadata is
> missing or has been stripped by a large organisation - millions of
> photographs and illustrations are swept into such schemes.
>
> For the first time anywhere in the world, the Act will permit the
> widespread commercial exploitation of unidentified work - the user
> only needs to perform a "diligent search". But since this is likely to
> come up with a blank, they can proceed with impunity. The Act states
> that a user of a work can act as if they are the owner of the work
> (which should be you) if they're given permission to do so by the
> Secretary of State.
>
> The Act also fails to prohibit sub-licensing, meaning that once
> somebody has your work, they can wholesale it. This gives the green
> light to a new content-scraping industry, an industry that doesn't
> have to pay the originator a penny. Such is the consequence of
> "rebalancing copyright", in reality.
>
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