The Copyright Fight – David Bailey weighs in…

 
Today is the day when the UK Government could vote to include a seemingly innocuous clause in an otherwise largely uncontroversial piece of legislation that will not only harm our industry but also place this country at odds with a vital international treaty. It is upsetting, bizarre and unnecessary to the point of being farcical.
The BPPA has been trying very hard to get the Government to see sense and drop the copyright clause from the Enterprise Regulatory Reform Bill for a while now. In a world where the intervention of a celebrity can unclog jams and open doors we decided to ask UK Photography’s biggest celebrity, David Bailey, to write to cabinet members on behalf of all owners and creators of intellectual property. He decided to write to George Osborne MP, The Chancellor of the Exchequer personally and he has given us permission to circulate that letter as widely as we wish – and here it is…
The text of the letter in full:
Dear George
I am writing because I am appalled at what the government is doing to our rights in the ERRB (Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill). Why the ERRB by the way? Why can’t copyright be dealt with properly in a proper Copyright Bill? I’m told everyone will be able to get their hands on our so-called “orphans” so libraries and museums can publish old photographs whose authors have long been forgotten. But never mind what’s lying around on dusty old shelves, what about the millions of “orphans” that are being created now every day!
Why? Because social media, and everyone else for that matter routinely strip our names and contact details from our digital files. They simply should not be allowed to get away with this. They can because our government refuses to give us the right to our names by our pictures (Moral rights). So now commercial organisations will be allowed to make money from our “orphans”, but not us, the creators.
This legislation should never have been even considered without first giving us our moral rights, and is contrary to our rights under the Berne Convention. Why the rush? A scheme, the Copyright Hub – a scheme backed by the government – is being developed to ensure that those who wish to find our pictures can not only do so quickly online, but also find the contact details of the pictures’ owners. You are about to put the cart before the horse.
I’m told the real reason for speed is that “releasing” orphans will create growth. We all understand the need for growth. But where’s the evidence? The seemingly impressive financial figures presented originally in the Hargreaves Review have mysteriously had to be revised – down by 97%! Which now apparently amount to no more than 80p per taxpayer per year. Given the damage this legislation will now cause to taxpaying creators, damage no-one has so far taken into account, the effect of this legislation on economic growth will in fact be negative.
It’s not too late to think again!
Best,
David Bailey

Michael Graae : Reporting from Libya

You may think that because the war is over, it is much safer and easier to report from Libya, but that is not necessarily the case. This post is written after my third trip to the country, the first being in February 2011 at the start of the war and the second in November 2011, one month after the death of Colonel Gaddafi.
After waiting almost a month to get my visa, I finally had it in hand. I spent the next few days getting ready and packing. First order of business was to buy insurance that covers war zones through Reporters Without Borders. Secondly, I got my two medical kits together. One contained basic medication such as paracetamol, immodium, plasters, etc. The other was a much more intense emergency kit containing syringes, a blood transfusion kit, extra needles, gloves, bandages, and a tourniquet, among others.
I also packed a set of body armour. I own a soft armour vest, which protects against any handgun round, shotgun pellets, and most knives. The soft armour is made of Kevlar, which gram for gram is five times stronger than steel. However, you are totally out of luck if anyone shoots you with an AK-47 or any kind of rifle. In order to protect against rifle rounds, you need hard armour plates. As these are £200 plus per plate, I borrowed them from a friend. They weigh 1.8 kg each and you need two of them. Each plate can stop six rounds from an AK-47. I’m sure it could probably stop seven or eight rounds, but I wouldn’t want to be the one to test it! As a whole the vest weighs a bit over 10 kg, and that is using ultra lightweight plates. I also brought a NIJ IIIa ballistic helmet for good measure, also borrowed from the same generous, safety concious friend. Whilst I never wore it, I was very happy to have it!
Importantly, for communication within Libya, I packed an iPhone which was to used for tweeting, shooting video and recording audio, a Blackberry (unlocked to use a local SIM card…), a small Nokia mobile phone as a backup and a satellite phone. I did not pack a BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) which is what the BBC and other networks use to report live from anywhere in the world. Photographers also use them to file, but it is incredibly expensive if you the one footing the bill. It costs £1000 to buy, then £4 plus per megabyte sent or received. Very quickly I could easily rack up a few hundred pounds  BGAN bill in a day or two, so it is best to stick to the mobile/broadband basics.
Once packed it was time to head to the airport. I usually carry on my body armour, but was forced by the airline to check it, fortunately they let me keep my 15 kg camera bag…
Tripoli Airport is semi functional. The gates didn’t work and you needed to use air stairs to get on and off of the plane. It looks like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. And don’t use the bathrooms….by far the worst airport bathroom I have ever experienced! I was quickly through immigration but was unfortunately stopped for a bag search which is incredibly time consuming. One of the passengers who I got talking to on the plane, was returning to Libya for the first time in 30 years and I was kicking myself for not being there for the moment he returned. However, he was very generous and invited me over for dinner and offered me a ride to my hotel.
Once checked into my hotel, it was time to find working broadband, as my hotel didn’t have it. Even if I was lucky enough to have it, the broadband in my last hotel was practically useless to file on. My goal was to find broadband relatively close to Martyr’s Square in Tripoli. It was extremely challenging to file without a BGAN, and almost comically, I reached Plan H before I got success………!

Plan A: Use broadband at the cafe around the corner from my hotel and the square.
Result: Impossibly slow.
Plan B: Find an open wifi network.                                                                                    Result: Found one, but told off by an old man.
Plan C: Use an internet cafe.                                                                                              Result: Can only use their computers and they didn’t have FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
Plan D: Use WiMax (like long range wifi…..)
Result: USB dongle not Apple Macbook compatible
Plan E: Use a 3G USB dongle.                                                                                          Result: Network not working……
Plan F: Pay a business to use their internet.                                                                      Result: 1LYD per hour, but not open on 17/02/2012 (the big day)
Plan G: Use Al-Arabyia’s internet in Martyr’s Square.
Result: Success! Until they packed up and left….while I was in the middle of uploading files…
Plan H: Use the internet at my fixer’s house.                                                                     Result: Working! Though slow and a 10min drive from the square.

On the big day, Friday, I spent much of the day in and around Martyr’s Square alternating between down in the square and up on one of the former intelligence buildings, where I was using Al-Arabyia’s internet connection. It was an amazing experience to be in the square with the 15,000 or so people celebrating. A number of women asked to have their photos taken during the celebrations, which I of course did. It is quite rare to have the opportunity to photograph women in the Arab world, so I took every opportunity I had.

Even with broadband on the roof it was difficult to file…and not because of the connection. Lets just say electrical wiring in Libya isn’t up to any sort of standard. Because my laptop battery was low, I needed to stay plugged in while editing to let it charge. Unfortunately, my laptop is metal and there was only one available outlet, which shocked me every time I touched the computer. It wasn’t bad, but was enough to cause my fingers to convulse and give a nice prickly feeling. I had to work through it though as I had no other choice and was very happy when I was done editing! In addition to being electrocuted whilst editing, I had to keep one eye on my surroundings. There was no gunfire in the air as it has been banned, but people were launching fireworks in all directions and some were exploding just metres from the building! I did my final upload around midnight, which was interrupted when Al-Arabyia packed up and went home, pulling the broadband in the middle of an upload!

While on the rooftop I met a commander in the Army who insisted on showing my photos of special forces training. I asked if I could come along on Sunday and photograph them. He said that was OK with him. However, he neglected to tell me they were on holiday until Thursday and I was to be in Benghazi by then.
Saturday evening, one of my fixers, Mego, took me to a street party in Tripoli. It was yet again a huge party atmosphere complete with western music, lights, homemade flamethrowers with lots and lots of horn honking. I was even offered alcohol, which is illegal in Libya. I didn’t take up the offer as much of it is homebrewed and will likely kill you because it contains methanol! All in all it was a lot of fun and quite the experience to party with them and something that never would have been allowed during Gaddafi’s regime.

Sunday morning, I booked a ticket to Benghazi and then walked around Ba Al-Azizia, Gaddafi’s former compound, with my other fixer, Mo. The destruction was immense. Almost all of it was destroyed by NATO bombing. Surprisingly, the few buildings still standing had been occupied by families and were being converted into homes. After a few hours taking photos, it was time for dinner and to head to the airport on what was the last flight of the day. To say security is lax would be an understatement. Bag isn’t weighed, your boarding pass is blank and it really isnt a problem if you are travelling with loads of liquids and set off the metal detector!

My trip to Benghazi was mainly to see people who helped me during the war against Gaddafi, who I hadn’t seen in almost a year. But I was also trying to photograph some of the military training I wasn’t able to in Tripoli. After two days of getting the runaround between both militias and the NTC Army, I was allowed to photograph at a NTC base in Benghazi where recruits were being trained and also signing up to join the fledgling force, albeit very reluctantly. They agreed to let me photograph as long as I didn’t disclose the exact location, write any names and show them the photos before I left the base, to which I agreed. The base commander took me and my translator around the base and I got some standard photos of people being trained. However, upon leaving we were stopped by a man other than the base commander and I was forced to delete the photographs in front of him because I didn’t have the correct paperwork. Of course no one could tell me exactly the kind of paperwork I needed, or where it could be obtained…!? I was also threatened by one of the men, who somehow knew who I was, which was a bit disconcerting, saying if I didn’t return with the correct paperwork I would disappear along with the papers. He also claimed to have some of my camera gear, which was taken at gunpoint by pro-Gaddafi forces in late February of last year!? It just got weirder and weirder! It wasn’t covered under my insurance, so of course I wanted to get it back, but after being threatened by him, I decided it wasn’t worth pursuing……
Annoyed, but not really frightened, we left. The photographs have been recovered from the memory card, but won’t be published. I spent the evening at the war museum in Benghazi, letting off some stress and playing around with the fully functional, but not loaded, rocket launchers and other home-built weaponry at the museum.
My translator told me the same man who threatened me came looking for me to talk to me and I was a bit unsure whether or not I would be stopped at the airport or found when I left my hotel, but thankfully I made it through security and on to the plane. Finally, as the engines roared and the wheels left the ground, I could breathe a sigh of relief…but not for too long as my translator wasn’t leaving the country for another few days. Thankfully, he made it out and his family still in Benghazi are also safe.
You may also be wondering, what does a trip like this actually cost!? Well I’ve totalled up the costs for you below:
Flights from London to Tripoli via Cairo, Benghazi via Cairo, to London : £426.00
Flight from Tripoli to Benghazi : £30.00Flight from Tripoli to Benghazi : £30.00
Hotels : £450.00
Food : £100.00

Satellite phone minutes : £75.00
Visa : £100.00
Total : £1181.00

Note : This doesn’t include costs for fixers, drivers, translators etc, as mine were friends and didn’t cost me anything, besides feeding and housing them when travelling. However, they generally cost around $100 per day.

The BPPA and The Leveson Inquiry in 34 minutes.

Three submissions, a lot of reading and an awful lot of discussion came down to a 34 minute appearance at The Leveson Inquiry today (Tuesday 7th February) afternoon. Was it worth it? Right here, right now the answer has to be a truly resounding ‘YES’. Our case has been outlined before; we wanted to impress on the world that there can be a huge difference between a professional press photographer and a bloke with a posh camera.

We wanted to make Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry aware that we are willing and able to be to be part of the process of finding solutions to the issues highlighted in the early evidence at the hearings. Most of all we wanted to highlight the four-pronged plan that we have developed to help ensure that photographs published in the UK news media have been checked thoroughly so that they comply with every law and ethical code that applies to that media in that situation.
Sitting there in the same chair that Paul Dacre, Editor in chief of the Daily Mail had occupied for the best part of four hours yesterday and that the familiar cast list of celebrities had sat in right back at the start of the formal hearings in November was more than a little nerve-wracking. Not so much on a personal level – but representing hundreds of honest, hard working and highly professional colleagues. If that wasn’t bad enough, the editors of The Times and The Sun were up after us!
We really cannot talk about today in terms of winning and losing but it seems that we have made our point and we know that Lord Justice Leveson himself said that

“Mr Turner, thank you very much indeed. Responsible photographers, like responsible journalists, are not part of the problem and they do need to be part of the solution. Thank you very much.”

If, after today, the industry takes us more seriously and if, after today, we are allowed a voice on issues that directly affect the lives, careers and reputations of professional press photographers then maybe, just maybe we can think in terms of a (small) victory.
Of course the 34 minute white knuckle ride was made a lot easier by the quality of our argument and the sentiments in our submissions.
The BPPA’s Board worked hard on this and there are a lot of people to say ‘thank you’ to. So to everyone who contributed, everyone who tweeted and re-tweeted about our submissions and liked our Facebook page. Thank you. It turns out that it was a pleasure to be your representative!
Links to the content of our appearance: TRANSCRIPT VIDEO

The BPPA gets its say at The Leveson Inquiry

Here’s a date for your diary: Tuesday the 7th of February. “Why?” I hear you ask, well it is the day when The BPPA will finally get to appear before the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice & ethics of the press.
In our main submission to Lord Justice Leveson’s Inquiry we proposed a four-pronged solution to the issues raised in connection to photography at the hearings to date:

  • Make the publishers of websites, blogs, magazines and newspapers and their editors financially and professionally responsible for any lack of due diligence in checking how, where and why pictures that they are publishing were taken. Photographs acquired from citizen journalists, CCTV systems and inexperienced photographers should have a clear and strict series of tests applied before publication to verify their provenance
  • Images purchased from holders of UK Press Cards or from reputable agencies that are members of a United Kingdom Press Card Authority member body would require a lower standard of checking and proof because the photographer holding the press card would, according to the new ethical code, already have performed tests as they were shot. Should the images turn out to have been acquired irresponsibly, that would constitute a breach of the code of ethics that they sign up to when receiving their new UK Press Card
  • Strengthening of the UK Press Card scheme with an enforceable code of conduct including the suspensions and cancellations of cards. This obviously will not stop the cowboys who don’t have genuine press cards but it will provide a framework within which to work
  • Agree a simple outline about exactly which laws apply to photographers when they are going about their legitimate business: trespass, assault, intimidation, harassment and so on. It would also be advisable to clarify where and when the various elements of the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child become applicable without allowing rich and powerful vested interests to slip a de-facto privacy law in by the back door

We started the ball rolling back in November when the association’s AGM took place and we started to discuss what we could do about the beating that press photographers were taking during the first couple of weeks worth of evidence at The Inquiry. Like most people, we had thought that the early stages of Lord Justice Leveson’s hearings would be about phone hacking but time-after-time the actions of photographers seemed to get more coverage than those of private detectives and over-zealous reporters.
Within days we had made our first submission in the form of an open letter to The Inquiry where we outlined our objections and sought to be awarded “core participant” status for the proceedings. The legal team behind the Leveson hearings took a couple of weeks to get back to us to let us know that we would not be offered that status they invited us to make a second and much more detailed submission by the beginning of January. We put the 18 page document in on time and following a few emails back and forth asking for clarification of one of our points we finally learned this week that it is all systems go for Tuesday, the 7th of February.
The BPPA wants to be there at the table when solutions are discussed and when decisions are made. The BPPA wants the voices of press photographers to be heard. Most importantly, The BPPA wants to make sure that the profession comes out of this process with its reputation enhanced, with its future as secure as it can be and with improved media and public perceptions of who we are and what we do.
These are simultaneously worrying and exciting times for press photographers. As a profession we have worked hard to create some momentum towards those goals and it is our aim to keep that momentum going on February 7th.
Visit The BPPA’s website.

"We are the eyes of the public…"

Eddie Mulholland & Peter Macdiarmid judging the AIB Photojournalism Awards 2012 in Dublin.

I’ve been to a mystical land! It’s a land where press photographers are loved and feted. They are considered professionals whose role is vital to the nation. They are not abused on the streets and the Head Of State, the President,  joins them for dinner when they have their annual awards ceremony, the winner of which is whisked away in a limo’ for a live prime time television interview. They are interviewed again for breakfast television and their winning photograph is plastered all over the national newspapers. One previous winner told me how he and a colleague were given a civic reception in their home town the year they won. To get there you just head north, turn left at Birmingham and keep on going.  You’ll probably need a boat or a plane, but it’s not as far as you think.
If you think I’m talking about the U.S.A then you are wrong! This land of dreams, where our profession is so loved is in fact the Republic Of  Ireland.
I’ve just returned from Dublin, after three days of judging the Press Photographer’s Association of Ireland ‘AIB Photojournalism Awards 2012’, along with my colleague photographer Peter Macdiarmid from Getty Images and legendary former picture editor of The Irish Times, Dermot O’Shea. We spent a fantastic weekend going through the cream of Irish press photography. The decisions were hard to make, but we were happy to spend the hours in a darkened room because the photography was just amazing. The results are almost a state secret, only to be revealed in February at the gala black tie dinner attended by non other than the Irish President Michael Higgins himself! Peter and myself were treated like visiting dignitaries and taken to the best restaurants and bars in Dublin, where the reception was never anything other than fiercely friendly. We are both looking forward to returning for the main event.

The thing that struck us both during the visit and which spurred me on to writing this, my first ever blog post, was how different the atmosphere was around the subject of press photography in Ireland. It really is respected, all the things I mentioned at the start of this post are true. On the final day of judging we were visited in the hotel, where the judging was taking place, by six photographers from the Irish national press for a photocall and on the following day the readers were put off their breakfast by our (mine and Pete’s) ugly mugs staring back at them. These national papers will also run massive spreads after the winners have been announced. The winner, as I said earlier, is taken to be interviewed on ‘The Late Late Show’, Ireland’s highest rated and most prestigious television show on RTE. This is fantastic support and publicity for the world of photojournalism and it is quite obviously paying dividends evident in the Irish public’s attitude to our job. The sponsor, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) must take a great deal of the credit too. They tour the exhibition to their branches around the country bringing this high quality work to the grassroots. Small communities getting the chance to see the work of the country’s finest. AIB also marry the tour to local festivals, so the photography becomes part of community events. It’s a simple idea but brilliantly effective because it makes people feel part of our job. It’s there for them to see in their high street.
Bearing all this in mind makes you wonder. Could we TheBPPA do the same !? Maybe we would need a fairy godmother sponsor? The work involved in touring any exhibition is daunting and probably beyond a volunteer lead organisation at the moment, but the publicity in other areas of the media must be achievable. We’ve got friends in television, why can’t we get them onside!? We all mostly work for newspapers and magazines, why can’t we get them to do spreads of member’s work when we have a completed project? I used to do ‘vox pops’ with Boris Johnson, surely City Hall is a prime exhibition space?We need ideas and we need everyone to get behind the cause…….
Whatever we do we’d better do it fast! The Leveson Inquiry set up following the phone hacking scandal, was very quick to turn it’s guns on press photographers. It’s easy to see why….we are ‘low hanging fruit’. The visible face of journalism. We stand on the street, we don’t hide in an office. We come face to face with the public and from experience I can tell you they are not big fans. We need to win them over. We need them to understand that we are there to serve them. We are there to show them what’s going on.
Andrew Wiard, a fellow TheBPPA board member and respected photojournalist, coined this brilliant phrase at a recent meeting when he said, “We are the eyes of the public..”
All we have to do now is work to get them to see it!