Legal Status of a Photographic Work: Aspects of Ukrainian and Foreign Legislation

Abstract

It is difficult to imagine a modern information space in the format of past centuries: small text messages about news and events and almost no visual component that illustrates the text. We live in an age of information society, which is constantly evolving. The amount of information we receive increases exponentially. The current array of information reaches gigantic proportions. The modern user is already accustomed to the visual perception of any information, which is an illustration or photo confirmation of the text. That is why the photographic work has become one of the central elements of the information world. With the advent of the camera on the mobile phone, every gadget owner has the opportunity to take photos. The upgrade of mobile devices is mostly due to the improvement of the technical characteristics of the camera. However, is every photo taken on a phone subject to copyright and has the same legal status as a photo taken on a photographic device? The development of the art of photography is much ahead of the development of Ukrainian legislation. This leads to problems in defining a photographic work as an object of copyright and its protection. The Unified Sectoral Law does not provide any definition of concepts or classification and features that a photographic work must meet in order to be protected. Gaps in legislation create an increase in the number of copyright infringements. Authors, in turn, do not know how to protect their work, suffer losses. To restore the violated rights, they usually turn to the court, which overloads the work of the judicial system of Ukraine. Therefore, the relevance of the study of the legal regulation of the protection of photographic works is the need to identify gaps in the legislation and clarify ways to address them.