Gov’t image copyright warnings risk harming social network sites

The Home Office Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet’s recommendations about copyright warnings in a forthcoming report could discourage the use of social media, warn experts.

The report includes recommendations on warning users about uploading inappropriate photos to their profile, and also copyrighted images.

The Good Practice Guidance for the Providers of Social Networks and other Interactive Services 2008 is to be issued on April 3. The report offers advice on the use of social media for providers, parents and children.

“Copyright warnings could certainly takes the fun away,” warns Henry Ellis, head of social media at Tamar. “People will go instead to sites such as Flickr or use e-mails to send photos around. It will be difficult to get that level of copyright control. You’ll need a lot of moderation and people reporting images. People are bothered about reporting inappropriate images, I don’t think they are about reporting copyrighted images.”

Guy Philipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau, says it would depend on how invasive copyright warnings are. “They could have warnings on the frame of the page, so its visible, or something that pops up when uploading,” he comments. “I’m sure they wouldn’t have something covering the whole page. They’ll find a way to warn unobtrusively.”

Rachel O’Connell, chief safety officer at Bebo, says that copyright messages and technology are already in place on the site. “We don’t allow users to upload music,” she points out. “It has to be copyright cleared, which is done by audible magic.”

The Government project was chaired by Annie Mullins, global head of content standards at Vodafone, and included social networks such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace as well as charities, the Government and leading academics.