With the demise of the US Orphan Rights Bill along with the equally popular Bush adminstration in late 2008, orphan works legislation may have seemed to have slipped below the horizon.

Compulsory viewing for most clients and also a large proportion of photographers, this video has only been on YouTube 2 days and already has 300+ rave reviews.

Sit down please. Take a deep breath. You are entering Californian Web 2.0 airspace. This is where the future is invented. We don't normally bother with stuff outside the UK but the web is global. This is a new publishing model (well, OK Rankin's "Dazed and Confused" did kind-of get there first, but as usual Brit innovation has been honed by someone else). Here is what Pilfered magazine says about itself:

Reed Business Information (RBI Ltd) have recently made another of their periodic attempts to get photographers to sign up to a rights-grabbing contract. This has happened every few years since the 1990's, with significant lack of success. Unlike at most publishers Reed's own desk staff tend to see no merit in forcing an issue thrust upon them by accountants, and if photographers resist they still have magazines to get out. At that point the photographers win and the issue is forgotten for a while.

This time around just one photographer is known to have caved in and signed.

In a world of cynical corporate rights-grabs, this JP Boden competition for under-14's is pretty much the noughties version of sending kids up chimneys. Boden, a large online and catalogue retailer of adult and childrens' clothes makes the prospect sound positively glamorous:

Renowned photographer Simon Norfolk has pulled out of a major National Trust photographic project in protest over rights-grabbing terms in an associated competition run by the conservation body.

Norfolk said he was ‘furious’ about the National Trust’s actions, and that he was left in no doubt that the forthcoming competition had been intended by the organisation to boost its own commercial picture library by exploiting the work of competition entrants.

Closing today, a poll at The Economist on the motion :
"This house believes that existing copyright laws do more harm than good."
http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/144

If you want to get really angry, read the proposer's erudite arguments for stripping us of moral and economic rights in our work whilst imposing compulsory registration of all works, so we are anonymised recipients of tax-derived blanket fees fixed and dispensed by, well, who knows who. It ain't your work, it's theirs. Fill in these forms sonny and get back to work.

Notice, with only slight amusement, that The Economist rights-grabs all contributions to the discussion, thereby demonstrating the real problem is not copyright itself but unbounded corporate greed.

Notice, too, that David Lammy, currently reviewing copyright law for government, is a featured guest. No doubt as a politician Lammy will be mindful of the wishes expressed through the Economist's vote. So far 73% support the motion, 27% against.

Photolegal.com is a new UK-based site that aims to produce fortnightly podcasts. The format is a couple of photographers talking with an IP lawyer and covering topical legal matters affecting photographers ranging from copyright to access rights. The first podcast is available now, the next is due around May 10th and will cover G20, Police stop and search, photography in public places and related issues.