Is This The End of Photography?

No. Even if this isn't just a scarey story made up by some blogger, someone will come along with a solution to the metadata problem. Off the top of my head it could be a computer program used to search image databases, or perhaps another method for tagging photos with copyright which can't be "stripped". Code - it's all about computer code. Clever people these programmers ;)
 
After careful consideration and thought I would have to say .....................
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nope
 
No, it's only a disaster for whatever's left of professional photography.
 
bomberman said:
Code - it's all about computer code. Clever people these programmers ;)
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I've been a professional programmer for almost 10 years and you're completely correct. However, it also works the other way - if programmers want to remove your copyright metadata, they are clever enough to do that too. Just look at how DRM has panned out over the past 5 years as proof of this.

Although the article is written in a sensationalist fashion, it is a terrifiying prospect. For example, somebody could take a photo from your Flickr feed - let's say a photo of your dog - strip metadata, and re-post it on a different site. If somebody sees that image (not the original from Flickr) and likes it, they can take it and use it for whatever purposes they like.

They'll have to do a search to find the original photographer to prove it's an orphan so they'll search Flickr and other photo sites for 'Dog', and try to find your photo in the search results. The odds of them finding your needle in that haystack are pretty remote to say the least. They don't find it, claim it's an orphan photo, and use it on their new project, maybe making money which you'll never see a share of, and you'll get no credit as the photographer.

The only way to make sure your image can always be credited to you is to put a bloody great watermark over it, thus ruining the capture.

George.
 
Badger lover, how can someone "do a search" to find a photo? That's like asking someone to list everything that they don't know :lol:
 
I think the worst thing about this is that if your work is used as "orphaned" (even if the orphaning process is caused by scrubbing the image) and you complain, you aren't entitled to legal redress, just a few pennies from the "fund".

I doubt whether things like NUJ rates apply to payouts from the fund, which is what we all normally use as a measure of damages payable for illegal use of our work.
 
Taken in by what? The Digital Economy thing is very real, its been discussed on here and elsewhere several times before.

Go google it... he's talking the truth.
 
but as i already mentioned, it seems preposterous: - how can you "do a search" for a photo to find the author? The fact that it is virtually impossible surely makes the whole thing null and void. Any lawyer worth his wages would be able to prove this in a court of law. You might like to worry about it, but i'll take it with a big pinch of salt and i certainly won't lose any sleep over it!
 
bomberman said:
Badger lover, how can someone "do a search" to find a photo? That's like asking someone to list everything that they don't know :lol:
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Technically a digital photo is not really a photo - it is (like everything on a computer), a collection of electrical signals organised as ones and zeros.

These ones and zeros are then converted to Hex files to simplify them.

It is the browser which converts these files into photos or music or text files etc.

You could have a Search Engine organised to simply look for a file which is similar to the picture you want to find.

A simplified explanation but there are already Search Engines to do just that.

With varying success.

I believe Google is also working on it.
 
Peter OK well, if you look at my original post that's the point i am trying to make :)

I do think a solution will come up. But in the mean time if you see your photo on a website being used without your permission, it would be fairly easy for a lawyer to contest its usage based on the fact that the law who said Mr xxxxx had the right to use it was FULL OF HOLES.

This is the kind of thing i am imagining in the courtroom:

"and Mr XXXX, did you check to see if the photograph in question had a copyright?"

"yes your honour, i did a GOOGLE search!"

Somehow, i can't see that washing in a court of law. The definition of "searching for the author to find the copyright" will HAVE to be specified strictly in order to stop everyone suing the pants off the publishers.
 
"specified strictly".... thats not how the UK legal system works. It doesn't deal in absolutes, because absolutes open more holes than they close.
 
(Just wanted to point out there's no difference on disk between a "hex file" and a "binary file", everything is 1's and 0's and it's simply how the 1's and 0's are interpreted to be shown on screen that demonstrates any kind of difference to the end user.)

Perhaps we will all have to resort to slapping monstrously obstructive copyright notices and steganographic contact information all over our work.
 
Well as long as you keep the original size on your computer and only upload resized images on the web wouldn't it be easy then to prove its your work ?
 
Whilst I am not adverse to poking fun at some of the recent anti-terror Bills, the truth is that these are not unique in their vagueness, in fact they are probably more typical than any that might be specific.
 
gavin2610 said:
Well as long as you keep the original size on your computer and only upload resized images on the web wouldn't it be easy then to prove its your work ?
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Yes of course you can prove that your work is not orphaned and therefore not royalty free, but if you read it, that means you get a penny payment for it providing the user can say they made an honest mistake.
 
ok now i understand all this about lack of copy right, and stealing images, but how in any way would this end photography?
 
Slap a great big copyright on your work and be done with it. If it gets used and the watermark is removed along with the metadata wouldn't this allow you to sue the publisher? Given that a watermark would clearly show it isn't an orphan image.

I wouldn't be surprised if those who are trying to pass the bill have been bribed or bought by the publishers.

Another step towards a zero rights lifestyle. God help our kids in 25 to 30 years time.
 
bomberman said:
Badger lover, how can someone "do a search" to find a photo?
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That's the whole point. The bill is saying that if you can't find the original photographer (via a search, which you can't do with any reliability), the photo must be an orphan work.

George.
 
The people most lightly to be hit hard are the photo libraries, whos going to actually buy an image when they can just "borrow" one from the net.
 
I'm pretty sure that you can overlay a pic with a second transparent "Gif" file of 1 pixel which makes it impossible to do a straight copy.

Unfortunately you have to have your own website and not public sites like Flickr.

The other alternative is to simply put up low res images.
 
It's bunk - unless they intend to destroy the whole Intellectual Property system - which they won't (too much money tied up in it).

The critical point in all this is that you should be making sure you appropriately protect what is rightfully yours. That means being explicit about your ownership of you work - be that via visible watermark or other means. If you can prove it's yours then it's yours.

Whether you get any compensation for misuse is an entirely different problem, but at the very least you're within your rights to demand that they take your image down (provided of course that the content is hosted somewhere that respects copyright - which isn't always the case).

PS - hosting on your own website makes tracing easier - provided of course that you don't hide/anonymise your domain registration (whois).
 
Overlaying an image with a transparent gif is easy to circumvent with print screen and paste image. Never put large size images on the web.
 
The one thing thats missing from this (and other arguments on here) is that not everyone is bothered about making money from their photos.

If you are bothered about money, then you need to be careful about handing over usable copies to the world at large on the internet. If you don't care then blaze away.

I wonder though if you would care when your photo of a lighthouse from your holiday appears on the next album cover of the Foo Fighters....
 
I can't be arsed to read the whole article.
Could somebody sum it up for me please?

:)
 
There is software that allows a password to be hidden invisibly in a photograph.

I could see that this idea could be reversed so even if someone strips the exif from the file they could never loose the hidden message. then it would be a case of turning on the hidden message identifying that it is indeed your picture.
 
I didn't read the whole thing, but I get the gist of it. It will affect some types of Tog and not others. I get commissioned to take a picture, I arrange a fee, I get paid , end of, job done. but if you shoot speculatively, and post all over the net, then basically sounds like you're screwed.

So it's not the end, just moving on, in my opinion :)
 
treeman said:
I didn't read the whole thing, but I get the gist of it. It will affect some types of Tog and not others. I get commissioned to take a picture, I arrange a fee, I get paid , end of, job done. but if you shoot speculatively, and post all over the net, then basically sounds like you're screwed.

So it's not the end, just moving on, in my opinion :)
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until you can steal all your wedding photo's, portraits etc etc off the interweb, without hiring a tog, i think the bulk of the industry is quite safe :shrug:
 
I get commissioned to take a picture, I arrange a fee, I get paid , end of, job done. but if you shoot speculatively, and post all over the net, then basically sounds like you're screwed.
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It means the value of photography as a whole will be devalued, and will hit commissioned photgraphy hard too, only it will take a little time to filter through.

Orphan works is a bit like the threat from microstock. Combined with the public's expectation to receive content for free has made most of editorial photography virtually impossible to live off. Much of corporate photography is going the same way. The result is large numbers of editorial and corporate photographers who are seeking an income from, say social or wedding photography. Which unleashes a lot of great talent onto the market and tremendous pressure to drive prices down.

If you want to see it in practise, take me - until recently I've been deriving income from corporate and editorial photography. But weddings start to look extremely profitable by comparison, so I started doing wedding photography three years ago, and have taken bookings for around 40 of them in the last 12-odd months. That's around 40 weddings that other wedding photographers in the area won't be doing, indirectly because of the pressure on prices from microstock etc.

With orphan works, companies and individuals will have the choice of paying a professional photographer a few hundred quid to take a photo, or legalised stealing a photo, paying what will inevitably be a minimal sum to a government agency, without the money ever making its way to the photographer. Of course there will be some commissioned work left over, but so little with so many photographers chasing it, that even the very top names won't be able to live off it. The same will apply to social photography, except perhaps for footballer's weddings.
 
All the time togs keep posting pictures all over the net people will steal (or soon, legally) use them.
Togs need to adapt, change the way they work and price their work. Someone will always need a to commission a tog to shoot something specifically for them whether it's portraits, houses, pets, weddings, products, whatever.
As long as the right price is agreed in the first place it doesn't matter what the client does with images after that. Yes some togs will go out of work and it'll sort the wheat out from the chaff, but conversely I wonder how many togs complained when all those photographic labs went out of business after digital came along?
:shrug:
 
Togs need to adapt, change the way they work and price their work.
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For sure, but developments that undermine the whole basis of copyright law, on top of all the other problems in the industry, aren't going to help.
 
God what a load of nonsense.

If one of my clients asks me to take photographs of their work for me to put on their website then I'll do so and send them the bill.

If someone steals that photo then so be it. I really don't care and neither will the client.

The photo I took will still be doing the job I was paid for.
 
God what a load of nonsense.

If one of my clients asks me to take photographs of their work for me to put on their website then I'll do so and send them the bill.

If someone steals that photo then so be it. I really don't care and neither will the client.
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It's survival of the fittest - if photographers can be quite as dim as that they probably deserve to die out as a species. Unfortunately there are also many photographers out there who really deserve better.
 
I think you are missing the point... whether or not it effects you is just going to be down to whether or not something similar to what they might commission you to do is readily available to steal.

Sure if your commission is to take a photo of something that doesn't exist, then great, but this is a licence to try theft first, then resort to having to pay for it.

You might think that doesn't effect you, but it will because a lot of people will take a lesser product for free... check out all the people who watch crap camcorder copies of films vs buying DVD's or paying for cinema tickets...
 
For starters, many or most of the photos published in this forum are likely sooner or later to become orphans, which means (assuming the law is passed) that people will have the right to use them without permission of whoever took the image and without paying them. Personally, I wouldn't post unwatermarked images here for that reason, in case this becomes law (it almost certainly will).

For those who are relaxed about others making money out of their photos behind their back, that's great - please send me high res digital copies of all your images, it might as well be me who makes the dosh out of them rather than some big faceless corporation!
 
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