Rights Grab Attempt ?

Good catch Siddhartha. If photographers can no longer make a living wage, how on earth will they be able to purchase future cameras? Yet another reason to switch to Canon.

If you have a .MAC account, read over the agreement
“You hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish any such public area Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting the area on which such Content is posted. Said license will terminate within a commercially reasonable time afteryou or Apple remove such Content from the public area.”

Switch to Canon…or be a monk :)

And, if you have a FaceBook account, looking for old classmates; “All content on the Site and available through the Service, including but not limited to designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the “Site Content”), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved. “

Individuals need to stand up for creative and intellectual property rights. We can not continue to let the corporate world usurp individual rights. A new Declaration of Independence needs to be written. This issue goes further than just the need for people to make a living. With today’s technology we as people are becoming slaves to the technology. Corporations and creators of this technology are gaining more and more control over the thoughts and creative abilities of individuals. It is very Orwellian. Actually it surpasses anything Orwell predicted. Big Brother is nothing compared to what has become possible today. The very technology that is allowing individuals access to creative outlets never before possible is also responsible for creating issues that threaten our freedoms.

I would like to offer some thoughts here, one being that times are changing much like the effects seen in the music business.

Used to be you learned your instrument and when you achieved a semi-pro to pro level your band got booked for gigs or played bars on average for 4500.00 per week for the group or 2000.00 per saturday night gig[private function}

Then times changed, the DJ’s came in and did your job for 995.00 per week,some had good equiptment lots didn’t but the bar sold the same amount of booze and saved 3500.00 and some production costs.

Next the DJ situation settled out to some degree and music changed, some alternative bands were learning to play and gigging in 4 month’s and to top it off they were living at home with little to no expenses and just wanted to be rock stars in their own mind {please note I am not knocking anyones choice of music or bands} the bar owners now had entertainment which attracted a younger harder drinking crowd and the ‘band’ who only played once in awhile was happy to make 50.00 each and free 24’s of beer.

For the bar owner its a business and profit means a better life and a still open bar next year,big problem for the musician trying to learn a living!

Photography to some degree is seeing the same change, weekend warriors with top notch camera’s and lenses shoot a whole wedding package for 500.00,problem for the pro!

Some amateur photographers loaded with the best equiptment luck out or even make a great photo by what they have learned, if they get published in a magazine it is a thrill as much as being a rock star but again problem for the pro.

Run a photo contest look through countless thousands of images and you will get some very good material at no cost which gives the company another source of income however they choose to use it as it is now theirs, bad for the pro but money for the company which is really in the business of profit.

Next issue to add is part time photographers who want it so bad to become full time,recognized ect submit your photo,get published and build your portfolio which you feel is going make to make your career while losing all rights to the one photo which can earn you money, again bad for the pro and the problem I believe is the un-education of a wannabe of how the real way is to accomplish your goal.

My photography is mostly corporate,weddings and magazine work shooting home interiors, my passion I realized a few years ago is photojournalism so I practise,study,practise and try to progress to some degree every day but I was lucky that I had other pro’s teach me that giving away your work is pointless and gets you no where other than being a photographer who will fail or become so discouraged that you give up or go broke,problem is in the meantime you are taking away money from the pro who earns their living every day doing what you want to do ut don’t know how to.

That said I must say I appeciate and respect everyone here for your knowledge and talent and someday I hope to be as good as you but for now I am a wannabe in photojournalism no matter how good my other work may be.

Take Care, Pete

Very good points Pete.

In general I have to say that one of the problems is that Capitalism is not a perfect system. Although competition is generally good and it usually improves the overall output of those competing, it is only good if everyone can compete fairly, which due to human nature, greed and other issues is not possible. I don’t really have any answers to a better system than capitalism and competition – several have been attempted. I guess what is needed is for our capitalistic system to be reformed.
In general we need to recognize that everyone has to make a living. At the corporate level decisions are made usually in consideration of the bottom line. Profit and share holders are the major concern, so these corporate entities that are putting together these situations that creates “rights grabs” are doing it because the most important thing to the corporation is the continuation of the corporation. Individual rights are not important to the corporation. For these tactics to continue people who are served by these corporations are complicit. Nikon or Apple or whatever corporation could not continue to act in a way that violates individual rights if there were laws to stop them from doing that, or if people stood up for themselves and refused to give up their rights. Unfortunately, most people do not read the fine print. Me included.
Note of disclosure. I did send a portfolio to Apple. Yes, I do not like their terms and am against giving up rights to the images, but weigh that against the possible boost it might give my career – I decided to compromise and take the chance. I doubt that my work will get recognized through this venue anyway, making it a mute point. However, as Pete pointed out there are trade-offs.
I have worked almost 20 years as a photojournalist, mostly as a staff newspaper photographer shooting daily assignments, so I have paid my dues. I am working to transition to doing long term documentary projects as a freelancer, which is more suitable to my talents and abilities and training. I did not enter my portfolio to Apple with any uneducated wannabe way of trying to make money from my work and get published overnight without paying my dues. My work has been published many times. In fact the reason I am a photojournalist and documentary photographer foremost is to communicate through this visual medium. Unfortunately, being human I have basic needs, so I must earn something from my work to be able to keep working. However, to me the work comes first. Yes, I am an advocate of photographers and other artists owning the rights to their work. In fact I believe that even though corporations and lawyers claim through their small print that they can take these rights from you – in reality if you create something – it belongs to you. In my opinion it is an inalienable right. In any case, to get your work out there sometimes you have to compromise and accept situations that are not perfect. I know because I worked for years as an underpaid staff photographer who did not retain the rights to any of his images. Yes, it was a lot of work for low pay, but I was doing what I enjoyed doing and had the opportunity to use my talents and abilities to tell stories visually. It sure beat many other low paying labor intensive jobs (of which I have done several). So, if I have to give up some rights to single images to be able to get noticed and to get my work seen by many people while maybe getting the opportunity to continue doing the work, then so be it.
My question is where are our advocates? Who is making these decisions? In other words don’t blame the photographers who are trying to make a living.
The problem overall these days rests in the fact that there are too many lawyers, too much greed and peoples’ values and priorities are all out of whack. The fact that we are discussing licensing, rights and permissions on this site over discussing aesthetics, light, composition, decisive moments and the power of iconic images is proof to this.

read how the german publishing house Axel Springer (Stern, Die Welt, Bild etc.) is attempting to gain unlimited rights for a one-time payment. http://www.henningharms.com/stuff/springer.jpg (in german)
scary…

i keep reading these terms over and over from different sources… i think the way many of them are getting away with it, comes down to one word
“non-exclusive” as written above. in court i (not being a lawyer) could
see this stand as still allowing you ‘use’ of your own image. though things
could turn really interesting if a company such as Nikon were using your
work in promotional materials, having gleaned your image from a group
posting without payment/compensation and you then sold that image
for use to Canon/Pentax/whoever. The copyright/brand protection lawyers would have a field day with that one… i’d get some popcorn
sit back and watch as the spectacle ensues..

The problem is not the democratisation of creativity enabled by the Internet. That process which Pete Woronowski described is something that professional photographers are just going to have to figure out, because Pandora’s box is open and it ain’t gonna be closed.

The problem is, that this democratisation is largely a sham – most if not all the infrastructure entities which enable peoples creativity (usually called Web 2.0) on the Internet contain hidden, legally enforcable clauses which seize and rob the very creativity they’re helping to spread.

This means that most, if not all the value accrues to the hub, not the spokes. That’s very smart economics, if you’re a Web 2.0 entrepreneur.

But it ain’t democracy, not by a long way, and ironically, sets it’s face against the democratic nature of the internet itself.

To look at it as ‘citizen journalists’ or Flickr snappers undercutting pros is wrong – ALL creatives are being robbed, amateur or pro, because the rights-grabbing infrastructures and their ‘content must be free’ apologists are selling a lie – that your ‘content’ has no economic value and can therefore be ‘given away’...while at the same time, they leverage it’s economic value for themselves.

It’s the OWNER who gets the value, and if you get someone else to bear the costs, risk of creation and then seize ownership?

Genius. It’s the total antithesis of any ethical economic system – basically, it’s legalised robbery…but I digress.

“So, if I have to give up some rights to single images to be able to get noticed and to get my work seen by many people while maybe getting the opportunity to continue doing the work, then so be it.”

Give up your rights to who? For what? Recognised by whom? The assumptions underlying this idea are the same ones which motivated photographers in the ‘Old Skool’ analogue world, and are being carried over to the digital arena – but with WORSE terms for professional and aspiring photographers.

The Old Skool way was paying your dues and climbing the recognition ladder, by working for newspapers and magazines – Life, Time, Paris Match, National Geo…but at least they paid you!

Now the idea is the same, but with MORE competitors (willing to undercut or work for free), NO pay AND a rights grab.

Any serious professional or even aspiring professional photographer who thinks about this for more than 30 seconds, should realise that as far as their career is concerned, it’s the economics of the dole queue…and then ACT on that realisation and NOT engage with these forces, if they are intent on robbing you.

Recognised by Nikon? Flickr? MySpace? Some pointless competiton? Some internet vanity mag? Woohoo! Big deal!

All the value accrues to the hub, not the spoke, and the spoke is you.

The internet is a free for all and that represents opportunities and dangers. If all we do on the Internet is follow the same old roads that we followed in the analogue world…relying on infrastructures and gatekeepers to ‘validate us’ by interposing themselves between us and our audience – then we’re going to be ripped off again.

Only worse than before, if those gatekeepers are intent on thieving the value from us.