[copied from the General comments forum by admin]
The Wales Tourist Board was notorious among Welsh freelance photographers for operating a Copyright Grab, and this abuse of photographers rights has been extended to the entire public sector in Wales. In other words no freelance will be employed unless s/he agreed to hand over copyright in the images s/he supplied.
No amount of persuasion by photographers could persuade the WTB that their practice was contrary to the spirit of the Copyright Act, unfair, or that they could get what they needed without it. This attempt at persuasion extended to a probably rather disorganised campaign of letter writing to the relevant Minister in the Welsh Assembly Government.
A couple of years ago the WTB was absorbed into the Welsh Assembly Government. As the WTB had been the biggest user of photographs in the enlarged WAG, the WAG took as its model for dealing with photographers that previously used by the WTB!
In other words the Copyright Grab is now officially endorsed, and used, by Welsh Government in all its many guises. A major potential source of income for freelance photographers in Wales has been lost if they are unwilling to hand over their copyright.
Many thanks to EPUK for pushing for the acceptance of the Copyright Act; what a pity it is that individual photographers don't stand up together to prevent this kind of abuse of their rights.
Not exactly a copyright issue but one certainly where T&Cs have been abused by a Welsh Public Authority to the detriment of the service provider:
In July 2008 we were commissioned by a Hamilton-Based PR company to shoot material for a County Council in Mid-Wales. Normally our procedures are quite clear cut, tied to our T&Cs and based around very solid project management principals (including clear rights management processes). But in this case the county-council had commissioned the PR company and they us; thus there was no direct link between our T&Cs and those the CC had based the commission on.
The CC REFUSED to follow either the shooting script or running order, OR for that matter allow the PR Company's rep to direct the shoot as agreed. And they attempted to shoe-horn extra footage whch had specifically been excluded from the contract. There were several instances of mis-management including one where I personally was verbally abused by the CC's project management.
DESPITE the mis-management and interference of the CC the shoot was completed to the best extent possible in the circumstances. They rejected the programme at the first rough-cut stage (a simple attempt to evade payment), and subsequently refused to pay the PR company either for the video shoot or several other aspects of the PR campaign.
The net result of this was a total of circa £14K in outstanding invoices owed to the PR company which the CC simply refused to pay! Ultimately this resulted in the collapse of the PR company who's cashflow was devastated. We are owed some £1400 as a result.
FORTUNATELY (for us) the Welsh CC's failure to endorse our T&Cs means that we now own the full footage including many of the off-camera comments and 'outtakes' which may well be of use in the future. Our T&Cs pass no part of the programme to the client until the invoice is settled in full. And since our client no longer exists...;)
The subject is potentially contentious as it involves the transfer of council housing stock to a so-called 'not for profit' organisation. So I'm hopeful about eventually recovering our own losses.
However the tale is a cautionary one. Like myself a graphics design company was 'caught out' in this one, and their retention of rights to their work had given them immense leverage in recovering much of what was owed.
Bear in mind that in this case a decent business was forced into liquidation resulting in the redundancy of four people a few weeks before Christmas. A final Irony is that the Welsh CC had the cheek to 'phone the owner of the PR firm to 'congratulate' him on a successful "YES" vote to the transfer and thus a successful conclusion to the PR campaign they refused to pay for!
The key to this is in freelancers and other service providers etablishing and adhering to strong T&Cs and absolutely refusing to work under a rights-grabbing agreement. NOT LEAST because not only is the potential for loss through the rights grab immense, but so is the potential for other forms of bullying and abuse... Anecdotally It seems that our experiences of working for a Welsh County Council is not by any means untypical.
Rights-Grabbing is, in my view, the thin end of the wedge when it comes to behaving in a disreputable manner. And should be seen as a warning sign that other aspects of an organisation's 'behaviour' might well be suspect...
We certainly don't expect to be working in Wales again!
Matt Quinn,
TFGtv.com, Corporate Vision for SMALL Businesses!
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