Written evidence submitted by Jeremy Moore

I am a professional photographer whose business depends on the ability to protect and license my intellectual property / copyright. I have been in business for nearly twenty years. I have seen my income earning potential decrease during that time partly as a result of image users finding ways to bypass the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (I can supply further details if required). I would like to make the following points:

1. It should not be possible for image users to by-pass the 1988 CDPA by, for example, requiring the creator to hand over copyright before s/he will be employed as a freelance.

2. Moral rights, such an automatic credit or byline, should be automatically granted in the same way that copyright is.

3. It should not be possible to require a creator to waive their moral rights.

4. It should be illegal to remove copyright and creator information from digital photographic images in all cases, not only those where it can be shown to have been done intentionally.

The above three requirements would help to prevent the creation of new "orphan works". However, many millions of orphan works have already been created as a result of the above three processes, particularly the third. It would be very much cheaper for a user to find an "orphan" and use it for free or a limited payment, rather than pay a creator to create another. Creators are businesses too! Therefore -

5. It should not be possible to exploit orphan works for commercial gain. Those held in museums and other institutions are a different matter and there is no objection to those being made available in appropriate ways.

6. It should not be necessary to register creative works in order to protect the creator’s IP. This would involve an unacceptable administrative burden on creators, and incidentally establish a non-level playing field between amateurs and professionals.

7. It should be borne in mind that courts have recently been established that Copyright is a property right protected by Article 1 of the First Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights .

5 September 2011