Stop43.org.uk stopped Commercial Orphan Works Exploitation in the UK Digital Economy Bill Clause 43

Stop43 is composed of a handful of activists, between them members of The Association of Photographers, The British Institute of Professional Photography, The British Press Photographers’ Association, Copyright Action, EPUK, The National Union of Journalists and Pro-Imaging, who were sufficiently concerned and motivated by the threat that Digital Economy Bill Clause 43 posed to our livelihoods that we took direct action. We had no mandate as such; only the support of the 16,000 members of the ten organisations listed on our website, and that of thousands of photographers, as proven by their direct lobbying action that resulted in Clause 43 being removed from the Digital Economy Bill.

This website and its accompanying Facebook group were instrumental in driving that effort. However, the effort did not cease with the removal of Clause 43 from the Bill. Clause 43’s provisions were and continue to be ardently desired by many sections of “the creative industries” and others, not least because they stood to make or save a great deal of money from their commercial use of our so-called orphan works. Consequently, our efforts continue to replace the inequitable and unworkable proposals contained in the failed Clause 43 with New Thinking, which we believe should benefit all.

We should make clear that at this stage we have not formally sought the blessings of our previous supporters for our New Thinking proposals.

For historical reasons and to separate that campaign from our current work we have decided to archive all but the front page of that campaign into a separate “Our History” area. Apart from rendering most statements into the past tense, it remains in the state it was in when the Labour Government that had sponsored Clause 43 lost the May 2010 General Election and was replaced by a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, and the threat of similar measures being reintroduced by a new Labour Government finally evaporated. The sub-pages on the right contain our statement of the problems with Clause 43 and those problems in detail, the “viral” images we used to illustrate those problems, our lobbying advice and the list of our supporters.

Our campaign received no financial support whatsoever beyond the provision of a web hosting package by EPUK and was entirely the result of unpaid hard voluntary work.