Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property

Written evidence submitted by David Hoffman

I have been a full time professional photographer for 35 years. I am a member of the National Union of Journalists, the British Press Photographers’ Association, I serve on the board of the British Photographic Council and I am the lead moderator of EPUK (Editorial Photographers UK). In that last role I have made a submission to the Hargreaves Review on behalf of EPUK's 1,000+ full time, editorial photographer members but I make this submission as an individual photographer running my own small business supplying photographs for editorial publication.

Others will be making representations to you regarding the financially damaging effects likely to flow from an implementation of Professor Hargreaves' report as it stands. I would like to restrict my submission here to another aspect. My work concentrates on social issues. My subject matter includes sensitive issues such as racism, drug abuse, homelessness, prostitution and poverty. These photographs are mainly used in press articles, by charities and in text books.

Photographs can be powerful tools for positive social change but they can easily be misused. I have had my work misused without permission by the BNP, by Redwatch and by other extremist groups for purposes that are damaging to society - for instance fostering racism and to raise their own profile. Having access to sensitive subjects imposes a responsibility on me to prevent such use and I go to some lengths to track down and stop such abuse.

This has become far more difficult over the last decade with the growth of internet publishing as the practice of removing embedded image ownership data has become widespread. This practice spreads orphaned copies (ones without my name or contact details) widely and the absence of a legal requirement to credit published work exacerbates the problem.

I am concerned that proposals to licence the use of these 'orphaned' photographs will encourage a growth in the stripping of ownership information and that extended collective licencing will permit groups whose aims are socially disruptive to lawfully abuse my work and exploit the access I have to (for example) victims of racist attacks to celebrate their violent and unlawful acts, to recruit members to extremist groups and to destroy the trust that I have built with the subjects of such photographs.

While I may be able to opt out of ECL, by definition the opt out can only apply to works where the owner is known. Without a strong, enforceable legal framework to retain ownership information it will become impossible to control the abuse of my work. It would be as though there were a law allowing cars without number plates to be taken by anyone but no law against number plate removal.

UK law gives little protection and no effective remedy for a breach of moral rights. The most important intervention that would prevent this would be to make moral rights

automatically asserted and unwaivable, to make a credit compulsory and to ensure that there is a simple, cheap and quick legal route to enforce these rights.

5 September 2011