Sir, While UK copyright law may need updating, your correspondents (letter, Mar 19) writing about the Hargreaves report do not mention the thousands of professional photographers in this country whose images are being stolen every day via “sharing” websites and unscrupulous picture libraries.
This is removing the value of good photography and has already been the final nail in the coffin for many photographers who had built a library or archive in order to earn a crust from it in the future.
If the Hargreaves report is adopted in its current form it will put a huge number of commercial artists and photographers out of work quite quickly. That will then result in a general dumbing down of quality as the price of a shoot or an illustration comes tumbling down.
This issue needs looking into in greater depth than it has thus far.
Janus Van Helfteren
Colchester, Essex