Makes me think of when a religious person posts an opinion on Slashdot.
Having people comment - even very caustically - because someone has paraded their superstition on a web site frequently mostly by rational people who aren't still stuck in a primitive time warp isn't the same as being shot. You get that, right?
how they are sitting idly by while the UK and USA prevent an Australian Senator from executing his elected responsibilities
Maybe HE can explain how the US and UK are preventing him from doing anything? The only people who want to spend some time with him are some investigators in Sweden. Once he gets over himself and addresses their questions, Sweden's done with him, right? That's it. The only entity preventing Julian Assange from doing anything is Julian Assange.
STOP SHOUTING.
Actually, that's one of things it's worth shouting about. Some weapons are drones, but not all drones are weapons. Yet we have people shouting OMFG EVIL DRONES! every time we use one instead of risking a chopper load of guys with a 1000-mile supply chain to wack a crazy murdering jihaddist running an underwear bomb shop in the middle of the Yemeni desert. And then when a local PD uses one instead of a human-scale helicopter (to avoid spending hundreds of dollars an hour to keep on in the air) while doing SAR or something similar, the freak-out crowd can't get their heads past "drone strike" blah blah blah.
They're just tools.
But don't also forget that China openly brags [google.com] about doing weather modification such as clearing smog for the Beijing Olympics or around other cities
Yeah, well, China also tries to pass off dogs as lions . So, yeah.
There are also 635 people in congress. None of those men and women are showing any leadership, either.
There's plenty of leadership there, just no followers. There are people who want to lead even farther into Obama's la-la land, just like there are people who want to lead towards a more libertarian atmosphere. When those types (the less-government-can-be-a-good-thing types) speak up, the left immediately calls them racists or whatnot. So they don't get many in congress to come along. You can bring a horse to water, etc.
Remember copyright was introduced to advance learning
No, not just for that. The founders understood that the society would be a much richer place if artists didn't lose their incentive (the ability to make a living if their work was compelling enough to draw a paying audience) to invest the time and effort (and materials, and hired talent, and a million other variables) in creating thing that it takes a lot of time to create. You're thinking of "photographers" as "service providers," but that's only a small sub-set of that sort of work. That's like saying that the guy walking around tables at a restaurant playing a violin for tips is the same as the first chair in a studio orchestra hard at work on a soundtrack project that it will take her and 100 other people two years to complete - long before the paying end customer (the movie fan) ever spends a dime.
Copyright protection allows people (sometimes by themselves, or sometimes including literally thousands of people) to gamble on the long term efforts required to produce more than an on-the-spot performance or hourly service.
The point is that previously you didn't need a contract beyond a check changing hands
You always needed a contract. What are the fruits of the labor? What degree of post-production is supposed to be included in the delivered results? How many hours before/during/after does "the check" represent? How many photographers are supposed to cover the event? Is there a "required shot" list? What are the cancellation terms? Who pays for transportation? Who is liable for things going wrong, in what way?
You're only addressing the "work for hire" aspect of a complex process, and only as it relates to the ownership of copyrights. Anybody doing such work without a contract to govern the entire relationship is no professional. And it only takes a couple of lines in that must-have contract to also address ownership of the rights or licensing, etc.
energy having to be spent on non-productive stuff
Contracts are written precisely to minimize the amount of non-productive energy spent.
You do not seem to know the business model very well.
Commercial photography (including social events, of which weddings are a sub-set) has been part of how I make a living for about 30 years. I've watched markets and business models come and go. I know a lot more about it than you do.
Wedding photographers usually have zero and sometimes even negative profit selling photos to the newlyweds once you take into account equipment and consumables.
If by "wedding photographers" you mean "amateurs who don't need to make a living at it," then, maybe.
The profit is achieved by selling copies of the prints to people attending the wedding itself.
Are you writing from some alternate universe, or perhaps through a wormhole connected to 1978? Like I said, this is something that you don't know much about.
A lot of these photographers do contract work for advertisement agencies as well. In this case the client gets to own the digital files.
The fact that you're not even using the right words, here (hint: it's not about the files, it's about transfer of copyrights, or work for hire, or licensing), suggests that you need to study this more.
The difference is the client pays a lot more, a whole lot more than a wedding couple is willing to pay.
There are wedding couples who pay $300 for a full day's work with a DVD and full rights, and there are wedding couples who pay $30,000 for what amounts to a small movie production company to spend the entire weekend with them - and what they get is a limited license to a version of the finished body of work. Likewise there are commercial clients who write work for hire contracts (where the photographer never has copyrights), and those that merely want to license an image or two from the entire shoot.
The purpose of copyright and patents as outlined in the US Constitution ("to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries") is no longer being served.
Except that the things it costs hundreds of thousands or many millions of dollars to create wouldn't exist at all without the ability to bring back those costs (and the profit that makes it worth risking all of that money) sometimes many years after huge checks are written for talent and production budgets. Don't like it? Just stick with the artists who are willing to give away their copyrights immediately or after a short period of time. If you're right, and the giving up of copyrights shortly after a work is completed is the morally right thing to do, then there should be all sorts of right-thinking artists happily walking away from their copyrights. Surely enough to keep you entertained without having to buy entertainment from an artist or publisher that distastefully hangs onto their own rights for much longer. Besides, how could you enjoy entertainment made by someone whose judgement and moral character is so abhorrent to you? Presto! Ignore them, and stick with the give-up-the-rights-early crowd. Surely they make enough movies, music, novels and texts to appease you.
Now if you don't put it into a contract, you have to pay for every reprint you want to give away after paying a good wage for a photographer to shoot pictures of your wedding.
No, now you pay for whatever the contract between the two parties says. You know, the think you both talk about and agree to before anyone signs anything or any money changes hands? If you don't like what a photographer charges, or what they're willing to sign over to you (license-wise) as part of that transaction, just go strike a deal with any of the thousands of other photographers looking to compete. Who cares what the default is? Do you sign contracts or spend thousands of dollars on professional services without looking things over?
Now, you tell me, who is the entitled baby?
The one who wants pet entertainment slaves to make them stuff for free. That's who.
core error - bus dumped
