Written evidence submitted by Adam Woolfitt

I am a freelance photographer of some 55 years standing having been active with magazines such as National Geographic , Fortune , Newsweek, Travel and Leisure, The Weekend Telegraph, and many companies including Kodak UK, Fuji UK and The British Tourist Authority.

  

As a photographer close to retirement I am dependant on continuing Royalties from the sale of my stock of existing images, built up over fifty five years of hard work.

 

These sales constitute my ’pension’ and represent my ‘life savings’.

 

So I think it is very important to draw your attention to the apparent bias and many anomalies contained in the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property. Many of these risk becoming enshrined in future legislation and all of them if so enshrined , could threaten my livelihood.

 

1) The Moral Rights of Authors enshrines the right of an Author to be named as the author of their works. (N.B. Photographers are Authors) But the Moral Rights of Authors are not going to be automatically granted, as in OTHER EU countries.

 

Why not ?

 

2)   In an age dependant on digital distribution it is now necessary to mark images with the name and contact details of their author by embedding this EXIF data in the digital files.

However it is also very easy for an unscrupulous person or organisation, who wish to use images without payment or acknowledgement, to strip this information out, thereby creating ‘orphan works"

 

The Review proposes NO sanctions against those who steal and exploit works by this method.

 

Why not? All other forms of theft attract the sanction of the Law.

 

3) The Review proposes allowing ‘orphan works’ to be used for   commercial purposes (even if an ‘orphan work’ has been deliberately created by stripping out the embedded author information)

This effectively creates a licence for organisations (Publishers, Design Groups, Broadcasters) to steal photography at will and without rewarding the legitimate authors.

 

Is it really the intention of your Committee to encourage large Groups to steal work, at will, from individual artists and authors  ?

 

4)    The Report demonstrates great bias in favour of the Publishing and Broadcasting Industries at the expense of individual authors and their basic human rights.

 

Why ?

 

I do hope that Committee members will reconsider very seriously the implications behind these questions and ask themselves what are the motives of the vested interests, so eager to legalise theft from small creative producers, one of the most vibrant sectors of Great Britain’s economic life?

 

 

Thank you for your time.

 

Adam Woolfitt

3rd September 2011