I've been doing some asking around about this petition. Appears that sometimes a petition is just a petition and it has no relation to any pending litigation. Here's a message I received from another source regarding the petition...
This position against unnamed and unspecified restrictions has been doing the rounds for over a month now, and I have already pointed out on this list and maybe a dozen others that there are no planned restrictions.
I have contacted the instigator of the petition and have confirmed this with him. Why this is still spamming around the country I have no idea.
What has irritated the originator of the petition is the idea promulgated
last year by those chaps at the Royal Photographic Society who suggested that it would be a wheeze for all photographers (amateurs I assume, as that is who the RPS represent) to have to carry an identity card to show they were bone fide photographers (or some such). Of course this is a daft notion and completely unworkable.
Some camera club types feel that it would be a jolly wheeze to have a special card to show how important they are.
So panic not.
I would worry far more about the possibility of the Gowers recommendations
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/gowers_review_intellectual_property/gowersreview_index.cfm
Which are important and do/will affect us.
Kind regards
Pete Jenkins
Vice-Chair
Photographers Sub Committee, National Union of Journalists