NPPA Files Extensive Comments, Suggestions, To U.S. Copyright Czar

 

DURHAM, NC (March 29, 2010) – In response to a request by the U.S. government's new copyright enforcement czar for public comment on the Obama administration's new plan to tackle an intellectual property infringement enforcement strategy, the National Press Photographers Association has filed an extensive, comprehensive 14-page response through the Office of Management and Budget.

Filed for NPPA by it's general counsel, Mickey H. Osterreicher, the document was a collaborative effort composed by an NPPA past president who is now a law student, Alicia Wagner Calzada, and Greg Smith, a member of NPPA's board of directors who has extensive experience in photographic business practices and copyright matters. The trio's efforts were done on behalf of NPPA's Advocacy Committee.

The government's new effort to come up with a strategy for enforcing violations of copyright is the result of the Intellectual Property Act of 2008, which created in the President's office the new position of a copyright czar, a post held today by Victoria A. Espinel, who is formally titled the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC).

NPPA's comments to the IPEC included an explanation of how the economy has turned many former staff photographers into freelancers as newspapers and magazines downsized, and how today as independent contractors who earn a living directly from their images a copyright infringement takes a more direct economic toll on the individuals - small business owners - whose livelihoods depend on licensing their creative work.

"If our work can be pirated with impunity," NPPA told the IPEC, "then skilled, experienced professionals have nothing of value to sell."

"The ever-increasing misappropriation of NPPA members' imagery also threatens the nation's health and public safety by undermining a profession Americans rely upon for information," NPPA said.

Osterreicher told the government, "NPPA believes the U.S. Copyright Office must improve the registration process by allowing easier, online group registration of published visual images and consider entirely removing the distinction between published and unpublished images. The office should also fully support metadata standards, which the Office has endorsed, both tacitly and effectively, by funding the SAA Photo Metadata Project."

"NPPA's Advocacy Committee put a lot of time and effort into this statement and I thank them," NPPA executive director Jim Straight said today. "This is a critical issue for our members. Today's economics threaten the very business model that has allowed our members to report the events of the world. The last thing we need are soft policies on intellectual rights. Our members, and their work, need protection in order to continue serving the public."

NPPA's full 14-page document can be viewed online as an Acrobat .PDF document here.

Members with comments and suggestions should contact Osterreicher at lawyer@nppa.org for more information.

 

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