Canadian law finally gives photographers copyright to all their photos

What's next? How about emails? In my company, many people who work for me write emails. Some of them are really quite creative and well written. Barring a contract, can these employees now republish their work emails without my consent? I suppose it's no sillier than Apple winning a billion dollars from Samsung for having copied Ericsson first.
People can say it's an unfair comparison all they want. It won't make it true. The fact is that art was BETTER before copyright law. All copyright law has gotten us is huge media companies peddling trash. Now those companies protect their turf by suing our kids for downloading music. This is not in the public interest.

We are over-regulating and over-legislating EVERYTHING. It is not leading to more innovation. It is not leading to better art. It's not leading to anything except more lawsuits and more lawyers. We need a serious rethink of all intellectual property law, the sooner the better.

Congratulations to all Canadian photographers. This is long overdue.

Copyright of what? Technically, the photo on top of this thread can not be published in Canada (Quebec for sure) without the consent of the person in the middle of the picture. So I don't think this law gives a lot of confidence to photographers anyway!

As the world rapidly turns into a substantially more complex playing field, all types of desperate attempts are made by the players and the law makers to try and persist with the liberal reforms that started five centuries ago in Europe.

It is all banana and no custard. More twisted and contradictory as it goes forward. And the false assumption is that it is always going to create a more sustainable environment for humans to prosper.

ownership schmownership is what I am saying.

All other rights can always be sold or otherwise transferred but one: the authoring right. Nobody was ever able to buy or sell the fact of being an author to someone else's photo. So, whatever lawyers managed to write about it, this decision is nothing revolutionary. But seeing what people are able to do with words, it will always be the author's responsibility to defend that right.

As usual, the news release is missing the details.

This is the famous section 13(2) of the old CANADIAN copyright act:
"13 (2) Where, in the case of an engraving, photograph or portrait, the plate or other original was ordered by some other person and was made for valuable consideration, and the consideration was paid, in pursuance of that order, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, the person by whom the plate or other original was ordered shall be the first owner of the copyright."

The changes made included the elimination of section 13(2) from the act.

The key statement from the old act was this: "in the absence of any agreement to the contrary" - Canadian photographers could always retain their copyright if they had an agreement to the contrary.

Now the status quo is Canadian photographers retain copyrights unless THERE IS AN AGREEMENT TO THE CONTRARY - so the situation can always be changed if there is an agreement in place.

Even the vainest of professional photographers will agree that almost anyone, if only by accident, can take a good or even great picture, at least occasionally. To record or perform good or great music is quite another matter. Yet, musicians have a hard time protecting their work.

To enforce copyrights of ditigal images will be more difficult than for digital music. There are probably 10,000,000 photos snapped for every song, ditty, rap, or symphony ever performed, sung, recorded, or scored. As a matter of principle, sharing or "social sharing" sites often require participants to waive rights or give them to the site sponsors.

This will protect, at most, a few people who succeed with an iconic or heavily stylized photo that, after appearing in public, inspires lots of immitators. On the other hand, it will ruin the auction value of some "famous name" photos if the creator retains the right to make and sell additional copies.

The clients who commissioned and paid the photographer to take the photo, will always have the right of framing it, hanging it on the bedroom wall and looking at it anytime they wish. Or they can put in an album and keep it on the coffee table, so they can show it to granny when she comes around.
No law will ever takes those basic rights away. Do not worry!
For all other uses, they have to pay royalties.
End of the story.

hehe - as usual Copyright issues starts flaming discussions. And thats reasonable! What is a good choice regarding Copyright laws is not obvious. There are several possible ways of doing it. Personally I am a programmer. Normally I write programs for a company. I dont get any copyright. The company gets the copyright. If I want the copyright for the code I write I either have to do it as a hobby or have my own company.

And - I think this is fair. At least for code. How about photos?

If you do not feel the photographer deserves the credit for "pressing the shutter button", then buy a camera and do it yourself. If it is so easy to do, this should be no problem.

If you buy a DSLR and lens, you will never have to hire a photographer again, right?

Seems easy enough.

When that doesn't work (and it won't), then the person who has dedicated thousands of hours to learning the craft (who you want to hire for peanuts) won't look so greedy.

The photographer sells goods and services (their labour and the photographic object) and sells a license to use the image. Any uses not agreed upon or granted belong to the photographer.

@andrewparkoo Here it the UK you pay for the photographers time, no what they shoot. How can you even begin to own something that is not made yet ? It us totally right that Canada fell in to line with common sense.

Absolutely barking mad - you pay a photographer for some photos and he still owns them!

There was already written in the copyright law protection based on agreement. And there will always be theft. Our government is full of lawyers and this just sounds like an open door for more work for lawyers. This is a new bill for lawyers, not photographers.

Just another thought, if I'm art-directing the photographer, how can the photographer claim to have created the image?

I've conceived the concept
I've chosen the message it needs to convey
I've set it up
I've chosen the lighting scheme
I've hired a stylist to fine tune everything else

All the photographer is doing is making sure that all my efforts aren't wasted by being technically skilled and proficient in his art.

If I can't to claim to have "created the image", then I'm going to give Nikon more credit for making the image than the photographer who trusted his light meter, followed the manual that came with his camera and pressed the shutter.

Perhaps there needs to be a distinction between commissioned commercial work where the photographer is just doing what he's told to do, and the more creative, self-inspired artistic photographs where the photographer has genuinely created everything in the final content?

Sorry, I find this back to front and probably bad for the photographic industry.

I'm not a photographer, I'm a graphic designer and as such, I commission photographers fairly often. The whole point of commissioning a photograph is for the permanent ownership rights (rather than "renting" them from a stock image company).

If I have to find the photographer in ten year's time for further permission to use my/his photo, I might as well rent a stockpic from Getty images.

As I said in my other post, the Copyright Modernization Act (Bill C-11) for all intents and purposes, takes away the right of Canadians to make backup copies of their media.

Thank you American corporate lobbyists for bringing a piece of DMCA-like law north of the border!

It's one step forward and about ten steps back.

it is 'a great Happening...

So let me get this right. Google's life diary thingy will have copyright of photos it automatically capture and can therefore can automatically transmitted it to Google's cloud. And the photobooth or the guy at the passport picture place would have copyright of the photo of my face?

Something is off with the way this law is written.

In the US, the photographer owns the copyright, unless the job was expressly done as "work for hire." I never do "work for hire," because the client will own the copyright.

Even though I have the copyright to all my images, it does not mean I can use my photos commercially without required permissions (model and property releases). How I can use my images is however a seperate issue from me having the copyright.

IMO, the concept that photographers create an image all by themselves is a bit of a problem. It understates what is in reality a more complex situation. If a work is commissioned, a photographer doesn't own and didn't create the image subject. If that belongs to someone else, or is a person, then giving copyright to the photographer may hold some potential problems.

What rights do you have as an inventor or manufacturer if you've commissioned photography of a new product that is in-confidence? What rights do you have if a photographer takes pictures of you or your child, even with permission? It's a general legal principle that you can't contract your way around a legislated right. So what limits exist in the new law around how a photographer can exercise their copyright?
Even as a photographer, I can't see that this is the right outcome all of the time. Photographers should not be without rights, but neither should photographers have all the rights.

usually, if one doesn't want a photographer, simply hire 'easy to train' camera operators, to shoot pictures, they do this all the time with big 'school portrait' studios who pay minimum wages, with no benefits... as well as portrait studio chains, who are in effect, dispensing images via routine non-artistic camera operations, portraiture for the 'walk-in' masses.

otherwise, i think this law at least gives photographers with greater artistic abilities protections other artists had in other media forms, which they didn't have as much.

if you don't like the law, just hire a camera operator, not a photographer (or a painter (a brush operator), not a paint artist). for some images, skills are not required, so if you want to hire a image-pusher (image cleric), you shouldn't have to worry about commission and copyrights. ask your janitor/receptionist/mailroom clerk to operate a camera for you... or some other office intern.

If I hire a artist to paint a portrait for me what copyright rights does this artist have?

He who presses the shutter button first: WINS.

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So if I pay a photographer to spend x hours over a period of x weeks to obtain a certain genre of photo(s) for me, I do not own the work that I have paid for? And he / she can use them (the photos) as they see fit, provided that I am also allowed to use them? Is that correct?

I must be missing something. If the photographer is being paid to take a photo, doesn't that mean he transferred the copyright to the buyer? Without the new law, can't the photographer pre-negotiate the contract before accepting the job?

Terrible change, and I type that sitting in my office in Vancouver. Copyright law and patent law are destroying innovation, exactly the opposite of what they were intended to do. Before copyright law, we had Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. Since copyright law, we have Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado, and it's not lost on me that the latter three are all Canadian. This is an improvement?

This is awesome ! THANK YOU CANADA !