Well done Mr Connarty

Well, high marks indeed to Michael Connarty - he wrote back to me late yesterday evening (after 11pm) to reply to my mail.

His response started off by saying he had been campaigning to protect copyright holders for eighteen years in Parliament and would continue to do so.  

On Clause 43 he believed that copyright holders were protected because they could "claim back" mis-identified orphan works.  My preference would be to put more onus on the prospective user of the copyrighted material.

On Clause 46 he denied that it was a "Henry VIII" clause, which would allow substantial changes to the Bill without Parliamentary approval.  Instead, it requires a Statutory Instrument, which in turn requires a committee of MPs to make changes.  He described that as normal in legislation.

Finally, Mr Connarty said that he did not vote on the Bill as there was no amendment tabled in the House and hence no opportunity to vote.

While I still am uncomfortable about the issue of Orphan Works I am heartened by the speed of response from my MP and the fact it was clearly a direct response to the email I had sent, not some "form" reply.  

I would suggest to any reader that every image you post to the net has your contact data in the EXIF and IPTC data, and anything larger than a size you are willing to lose should have a watermark containing a copyright symbol, date, your name and some means of contacting you.