Rejected petition Urgent ammendment to "Orphan Works" rules

The new Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act includes clauses referring to "orphan works". The intention of this legislation was stated as to free up old creative works that cannot be used because the original copyright holder cannot be found. What this Act fails to take account of is that creative works are always the property of someone and just because someone fancies using it, they should not have the right to help themselves, albeit after a cursory search for the owner. It also fails to take account of the routine stripping of meta-data from digital images by social networking sites that removes all trace of the ownership data from every image posted. If the Government is serious about protecting the rights of the creative industries they must add the following clause to the Act as a matter of urgency: "No creative work that is, or appears to be, under 75 years of age may be regarded as an orphan work".