Our response to the IPO consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Back in December the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) launched a consultation on the use of copyright material for training AI models. They pointed out that this has presented new challenges for the UK’s copyright framework, and many rights holders (especially photographers) have found it difficult to exercise our rights in this context. They pointed out that it is important that copyright continues to support the UK’s world-leading creative industries and creates the conditions for AI innovation that allows them to share in the benefits of these new technologies.

This consultation sought views on proposals to deliver against the government’s objectives for this area, which are:

  • Boosting trust and transparency between sectors, by ensuring AI developers provide right holders with greater clarity about how they use their material.
  • Enhancing right holders’ control over whether or not their works are used to train AI models, and their ability to be paid for its use where they so wish.
  • Ensuring AI developers have access to high-quality material to train leading AI models in the UK and support innovation across the UK AI sector.

Thanks to a great deal of hard work from Board Member Andrew Wiard we have made a submission to the consultation which makes it clear that we, as photographers, have a lot to lose if the Government introduce an opt-out system for those wishing to not have their work used for creating AI models. We have pointed out that the current copyright laws, if enhanced and properly supported, offer rights holders the best chance of protection against widespread copyright theft that these AI models are employing.

If you’d like to read it, you can find The BPPA’s submission here

Alamy – a follow-up

The UK Press Gazette quoted The BPPA’s open letter to Alamy’s CEO in their piece about his video signalling his intention to reduce the photographers percentage of royalties to 40%. This morning the UKPG asked us to provide a response to James West’s latest video where he offers to keep the 50% split for exclusive content. We provided the following text:
 
“Alamy’s move to alter their commission structure has brought a large number of other issues to the surface such as the low prices they sell pictures for, their broken promise that when they reduced the photographers cut to 50% they wouldn’t go further and their somewhat grudging acceptance that it is the commitment and buy-in from thousands of photographers that has got them to the positive position in which they now find themselves.
 
The BPPA welcomes Alamy’s decision to reconsider their reduction in the percentage paid to photographers but in making this only for exclusive content they are still going to anger many of our members. One of them has said “exclusivity is appropriate to a delicatessen, not a Walmart” and this sums up how most feel.
 
Should they push ahead with this plan the details of how they manage this will be complex. Will photographers have to make some sort of declaration for every single picture retrospectively? Will the burden for proving exclusivity rest with the photographers? Our opinion is that Alamy are still not listening and are still cutting the income of all those photographers who for very good reasons do not wish to, or cannot, surrender exclusivity.”

Photography is not harassment

 
This is an open letter to the ITV management who have promoted their programme “Tonight: Harassment Uncovered” which, in places, confuses photography with sexual harassment. The programme aired at 7.30pm on the 23rd of February 2017
Dear ITV
Professional photographers are against any and all harassment of people going about their private and lawful business. To suggest or imply anything else would be disingenuous at best and libellous at worst. Street photography is a legitimate and entirely honourable form of documentary photography practised the world over.
Should any individual use this or any other art form as a cloak to hide their illegal activities then that is an issue that should be part of a Police investigation and not an excuse to demonise an entire genre of documentary photography and film-making.
The laws already exist to stop harassment and stalking and a blanket ban on any and all photography or filming without permission (amateur or professional, it matters not) would be to the detriment of society as a whole.
The BPPA

FREE MONEY!!!!

Ok – now we have your attention.
Every year DACS ( The Design and Artists Copyright Society) collects millions of pounds worth of royalties due for use of our photographs from libraries, universities and other organisations. It is payment for lending books, photocopying and things like that.
They then redistribute this money to us through the “Payback Scheme” – and it usually comes to several hundred pounds each.
THIS MONEY BELONGS TO YOU – IT IS OWED TO YOU – BUT YOU HAVE TO CLAIM IT!!
You only have until September 30th this year to make your claim – but it only takes about half an hour to do – and you will get a decent payout just in time for Christmas.
We realise that many photographers are daunted by the prospect of making a claim – but it really is very simple – and can all be done online.
To help you with this – here is a beginners run through of what you will need to do…
REMEMBER DO NOT ALLOW AN AGENT TO PERSUADE YOU TO ALLOW THEM TO DO IT FOR YOU – IT’S YOUR MONEY – DON’T GIVE AWAY SEVERAL HUNDRED POUNDS FOR NOTHING!
So – here’s what to do.
Firstly you have to get together some info.
(Yeah – I know this sounds like a drag – but look at it this way – Its a couple of days wages for half an hours work)
1. Get together the title and date of three (thats all!!) books that have used your pictures in the whole of your career – it doesn’t matter what they are or when they were published , just so long as they have an ISBN number.  You can look up this info via Google or maybe find it on Amazon.
2. Now find the same info for three magazines that have used your pictures. Not in the last year – but in your whole career.  I’ll say it again – thats three pictures used in magazines EVER!!  All you need if the title, date and the ISSN number of that magazine – again you can get this info with a google search.
(If you don’t have cuts or are struggling to remember dates then maybe you can work backwards – go through your picture archive and dig out some pictures you know made it into a magazine, and then check magazines shortly after this date?)
3. Finally – Have you had any pictures used on TV in the last year? Make a list of these too – although these have to have been during 2015
Thats it – you’ve done the hard part.
4. Now go to secure.dacs.org.uk and register.
Fill in your relevant details; that you are claiming for photography, how many years you have been working as a ‘visual artist’, what organisations you belong to, etc.
Now make your claims…
Firstly books.
You are claiming for all uses throughout your career up until the end of the relevant claim year, in this case ending 31st December 2015 – but you don’t have to list them all!
As we said earlier DACS cannot identify specific secondary uses of your work, so all you need to do is prove that you have had pictures published in books at some point in your career. They only ask for the ISBN number, title and year of three books included in your claim.
Then they then ask you to estimate how many times, throughout your career, your pictures have been used in books.
Finally then ask you to tick off all categories into which these uses fell – Academic, Art, etc.
And that’s it.
Next – Magazines and Journals.
Its an identical procedure – asking you to list three magazines where you have had pictures published – including their Name, issue number or cover date and
ISSN, ISBN or barcode number
Then – Television.
In this case only your claim is restricted to uses in the relevant DACS claim year, for now 2015. You are asked to enter how many uses in specified TV channels. Skip this if its not relevant or you can’t remember.
Thats all they want to know about pictures published.
Really.
It’s that simple.
After that all you have to do is read and accept the mandate authorising DACS to act on your behalf, which you sign with a tick. Then enter your bank details, tax status, and VAT detail. And finally you are asked to accept their Payback T&C’s.
(Please read the mandate and T&Cs – make sure you understand and are happy with them!!)
That’s all you have to do. Job done. Sit back and wait for a few hundred quid to drop into your bank – just in time to buy xmas presents or to pay for the xmas party!!!
But, do it now, before September 30th!
NO, REALLY – DO IT NOW – DON’T PUT IT OFF!!
Do not allow your agency to claim on your behalf – they take a big commission and in some cases even an admin fee too. Whatever they say, it’s your choice. Beware any new agency small print you may not have read authorising them to claim instead. They cannot do this without your express permission.
Do not give it – it’s your money. Not theirs.
(If they have in the past claimed in your name, and are now being a bit difficult about releasing the necessary sales info, you may well find DACS accepts the details provided in those previous claims as evidence for your claim today).
Finally, if any of the above is unclear, go to DACS FAQ’s:
DACS FAQ’s
Or ask us via the BPPA members Facebook page.
DO IT NOW – AND DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU THAT THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO HALF – ITS YOUR MONEY!!!

An open letter to Time Inc UK

 
When several photographers started getting letters from Hamish Dawson, Publishing Director  of  Time Inc.(UK) Ltd, Specialist Sport and Leisure with a new rights grab which asked them to agree to sign away all rights in any work that they carried out for the magazines and websites in the group we decided to write to him. Below is that letter and below that is his reply.
We are pretty sure that few people will bother to go down and read what he said in reply but it is worth noting that in the final paragraph he says:
“If an individual contributor does not wish to enter into an All Rights agreement, it may be possible for that individual to negotiate a different arrangement, for example, a Qualified Rights agreement. Each case continues to be considered on its own merits, and that decision remains with the senior team on the brand concerned.”
This is a long way from being the response that we would be looking for but it is a course of action that is open to individual photographers to follow if they are offered work by one of the Time Inc UK titles and they don’t want to sign the new contract.

Dear Mr Dawson

What would make a photographer with well over twenty years experience, a mortgage and a family tell one of his key clients to “get lost” – using language that we couldn’t and wouldn’t want to post on a public facing website?

The answer is your new rights-grabbing contract which includes a not-so-subtle line giving them a choice between signing what appears to be a massively unfair deal or losing any and all chance of supplying you ever again. Sadly, you aren’t the first major publisher and buyer of photography to decide that you want to tear up long-standing agreements which saw you buying licenses to use the photographs whilst the copyright remained with the photographer. Sadly, you probably won’t be the last either.

The reason that the old one was a ‘long-lasting agreement’ was because it was fair – the word ‘equitable’ even comes to mind. The fees paid were OK but the ability to re-sell the work after an initial period of exclusivity made the jobs worth doing. Had you, the publisher, substantially increased the fees payable to the photographers to redress this balance then that sense of fairness may have been saved from what most of those photographers feel will be a sad, painful and untimely death.

Receiving these letters just before Christmas has been causing anger, resentment and pain for a large number of photographers who can be excused for assuming that the calculation within the Time Inc UK management must be that enough existing people with no real option to do otherwise will sign and enough struggling photographers who don’t yet work for you will grasp their opportunity to get more work and keep their heads above water.

Make no mistake, this is not a small adjustment to the terms and conditions under which so many photographers supply work to you. This is moving the goalposts, repainting them and renaming them as ‘scoring portals’.

We would like to give you the opportunity to explain why this is being done. We probably know the obvious answers about maximising shareholder returns and the less obvious ones about protecting the brands but what about the relationship that you had with talented, creative and dedicated suppliers?

Does a rights-grab of this magnitude make it worthwhile destroying relationships that have stood the test of time and that have worked well?

Any explanation that you can provide will be shared with photographers because many of our members are struggling with your decision.

Kind regards

Neil Turner

[email protected]

Dear Mr Turner,

Thank you for your e-mail.

As you correctly observe, we are not the first publisher to re-evaluate our rights purchasing position, and a number of our agreements are indeed long-standing.

Unfortunately, while the agreements may not have changed, the markets, media and commercial circumstances in which we all operate have changed quite dramatically over the last few years, and we now operate in quite a different publishing and media landscape to the one which pertained  when many of our existing rights agreements were first set up.

I would first make the point that most of our existing agreements are between IPC Media and the contributor concerned. Since becoming Time Inc. (UK) Ltd., we have viewed it as necessary to bring these agreements up to date. Secondly, many of our agreements do not acknowledge the fact that the company now has significant and rapidly growing, digital publishing platforms and the new agreements reflect this development.

We have also been encouraging our specialist editorial staff to improve the clarity of their commissioning and written communication, and have set out some standards which we expect to be followed, and which we believe are in the interests of both contributors and the brands alike.

Regarding the All Rights agreement that is being sent to Time Inc. (UK) specialist contributors, it has been our practice for a number of years to ask many of our freelance contributors to enter into either an All Rights or Qualified Rights agreement when we purchase content from them. In many instances we’ve asked contributors to sign on-going agreements to cover all the material that they sell to Time Inc. called ‘Core Rights Agreements’. So the agreements that are now being dispatched, while they have been updated and re-worded, are not a new innovation and having a Core Rights Agreement in place ensures that payments can be made to contributors much more speedily than might be the case if individual contracts had to be sent out and agreed on a job-by-job basis.

If an individual contributor does not wish to enter into an All Rights agreement, it may be possible for that individual to negotiate a different arrangement, for example, a Qualified Rights agreement. Each case continues to be considered on its own merits, and that decision remains with the senior team on the brand concerned. Contributors should, however, bear in mind that commercial realities dictate that we will be using the content that we purchase in many different ways, both now and in the future and quite clearly, unless both parties are willing to enter an agreement that suits them both, there is no viable basis on which work can be commissioned or accepted.

I hope that this clarifies our position.

Kind regards

Hamish Dawson
Publishing Director 

Time Inc.(UK) Ltd. Specialist Sport and Leisure

Golf Monthly; Rugby World; World Soccer; The Field; Shooting Times; Sporting Gun; Shooting Gazette; Shootinguk.co.uk; Angler’s Mail; Amateur Gardening

If you know any photographers who are affected by this or who might be affected by it in the future, please share this with them. The terms and conditions under which many of us work are being steadily eroded by publishers who seem to opt for the ‘nuclear’ all-rights option rather than consult with their previously loyal contributors and explore the more equitable route of agreeing licenses that suit the current world of publishing. It is also interesting to note that Time Inc haven’t tried to do this to their US photographers… YET!