­SNAP into ACTION & SIGN this PETITION Our creative industry needs your support, before UK Copyright Law takes away the future livelihoods of photographers & film-makers through ECL. Extended collective licensing (ECL) consists of collective copyright laws and licensing agreements affecting intellectual property such as photography and film. ECL agreements extend the licensing rights of copyright holders works legally without the need to seek permission by a user. As a member of a collecting society this is an automatic extension. Introducing Extended Collective Licensing through UK copyright law will utterly devastate the photography and audio-visual industry, causing a ‘chilling effect’. It will affect the ability of any creative person to earn a direct income from their works. How? By transforming the role of copyright - from permission of 'the' rightsholder, to no permission required from 'any' rightsholder; there will be no requirement to directly notify about schemes or payments to a rightsholder or their representatives, nationally or internationally; & no opportunity to negotiate on proposed fees. All will be automated through one collecting society. It is simply a dogmatic scheme that will allow collecting societies and user organisations to transform copyright law into an apparatus that will monetize our content legally for their benefit. Over the next few months the Government will introduce legislation to enable voluntary Extended Collective Licensing schemes by collecting societies, as suggested by the IPO (Intellectual Property Office). This will have dire consequences for individuals in our industry to earn direct income from our works. - The belief that free negotiations would lead to higher remuneration is a huge presumption not supported in reality - a rightsholder who has not opted out of an ECL agreement is subject to the remuneration agreed by either the organisation requesting an ECL scheme or the Collecting Society - there is NO ability to negotiate! - Any rightsholder national or international is subject to the internal remuneration scheme of the Collecting Society over which they have NO influence! - A Collecting Societies' application of equal treatment and remuneration is wholly dependent on their governance and transparency, which is currently self-regulated. It will be extremely costly and time consuming to prove that a rightsholder has received fair remuneration for the extended use of their work and NO guarantee that an content with dispensations will be considered! - A Collecting Society operating a payback scheme issues out an average of £572.00 per annum per member, not enough to live on! - A Collecting Society has no proof of a working system to cope with the overwhelming amount of content that will be extended through such schemes. Many rightsholders will have to continually check schemes to see whether their works have been included in order to opt out. Creators and rightsholders should not be forced into an "all or nothing" situation! The IPO has over the last year received many letters of concern from individuals and photography organisations across our sector about ECL and other legislative issues. ALL of which have been completely IGNORED. In fact the government believes we are all happy to have our rights to our works taken away from us. So unless we want to see the end of our UK industry (and eventually abroad), we need to petition against this change and let the IPO and the UK Government know we are NOT HAPPY! What will make a huge difference to all our futures is for every creative person to speak out and support this petition by signing it today before it's too late and ECL becomes part of copyright law this year!