Copyright
As a professional organisation whose members create words and images for a living, we take copyright very seriously. Words and images are how our members keep their roofs and walls above their heads/around their families, and put food in their stomachs.
Generative Artificial Intelligence
The OWPG believes that the provenance of original creative work should be protected by law, without exception and without acquiescence.
When a member of the OWPG creates copyrighted media such as text, illustrations, photographs, video, audio or other material, and retains the intellectual property of that media, it should remain under the copyright holder’s control.
The Guild opposes any change in copyright law that would legalise the use of this intellectual property to train Generative Artificial Intelligence models without explicit consent from copyrights holders.
The Guild objects to the use of members’ copyrighted material obtained by Generative Artificial Intelligence models without consent and/or negotiated payment in any sphere of activity.
“Opportunities” to Supply Images for Free
The industry has an issue with the quantity of images and words being offered for free.
But consider it this way – would you expect to walk into your local supermarket and expect them to give you your weekly shopping in return for a mention about how wonderful they are on Facebook? Or your plumber to fix that leak that’s threatening to turn your house into a swimming pool for free (at 7pm on a weekend) if you linked to them on your website? Or your landlord to say you don’t need to pay the rent if you post some nice tweets about them?
They don’t accept that, quite simply as it’s not a commercially viable way of earning a living. So we understandably take a strong stance against those who wish to acquire images and/or words for free – our members need to eat and keep a roof over their heads just as much as any other professional.
Images on this site are © the individual photographer. This is often Chiz Dakin (unless it’s a News or Outdoor Focus image) or David Taylor or Chris Howes (particularly for Awards images) unless otherwise credited.
Images may not be reused (including reuse on the internet, blogs, etc) without a licence from the photographer unless they are images supplied as part of a press release when they may be used to illustrate an article based strongly on the press release.
Text on this site is © OWPG 2012 to today.