[richardjordan]

So, yes, we've found a way to look at this law and find an issue that needs addressing - claiming these individual small works.

The aim of this though is to rescue all of the orphaned works that should be in the public domain but are wrapped up in all kinds of mess. If you are contactable as the owner of a work then your rights are not in question. But there are tons of orphaned works that are locked up because of the complexity of assigning copyright and identifying holders.

The real enemies of this bill are big media companies who recognize it as a first step at revitalizing the public domain after decades of encroachment by industry friendly bills. They'll couch the arguments like this when lobbying - it hurts the little guy - but they don't care about the little guy.

If your pictures are on your instagram account there's a simple way to contact you. You are clearly identifiable as the content rights owner.

The constantly increasing levels of copyright are a far bigger threat to our freedoms than figuring out how to meta-data tag instagrams to clearly identify the copyright owner to stop some mythical entity reproducing your picture of your cat farting.

[rodgerd]

Big companies are most definitely the enemies of this law. They are its most enthusiastic proponents. News Limited will ensure its photographs are kept from "orphan" status, but they will no longer find themselves getting in trouble for grabbing random work from the internet and using it to make money.

[Retric]

Your missing the point of this. It's supposed to protect large companies when they use a photograph withought permission. Because piracy is bad unless your newscorp ect.

[richardjordan]

Thank you for explaining what I'm missing from your point of view. However, I've been following this legalization since it was being discussed a long time ago and it's absolutely about returning works to the public domain. Sure there might be some areas to iron out but it was not conceived as a gift to big corps but as a way of slowly eroding their ability to use copyright to crush competition. Their ability to use the odd photo unpaid is a far smaller issue, it's just one they've discovered resonates so are pushing it as a phony grass roots issue which people are jumping on. This is how big corporations always attack restrictions.

The balance of benefits to society will outweigh the negatives if we can increase the ability to recla orphaned works for the public domain. People reacting against this miss the point that right now if they want to use your photo they will and you'll probably never even find out and have little recourse if you do.