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Articles from October 2014
Register of Copyrights Maria A. Pallante has released a public draft of the
Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition (the “Third Edition”). This is expected to be the first major revision of the law in more than two decades. The draft presents more than 1200 pages of administrative practices and sets the stage for a number of long-term improvements in registration and recordation policy.
Footage.net has added a new clipbin sharing capability to its online stock footage search platform. The newly released feature allows users to share clipbins via email, streamlining the review and evaluation of stock footage screening clips and supporting greater collaboration.
In today's world most editorial or marketing pieces can be delivered in a variety of different ways over a long period of time. Customers licensing rights to photos don’t want to take the risk that plans will change and somehow an image will be used beyond a narrow and specific RM license. Consequently they often ask for "all-rights" to use the image. Here are some thoughts on how to deal with such requests and still hang onto the customer.
Dreamstime, Inc. is experiencing massive growth via their newly released app,
Dreamstime Companion launched in July on iOS and Google Play. The app allows smartphone users to access the Dreamstime community and upload their mobile photos via their mobile devices. In about three months approximately 30,000 mobile images have been added to Dreamstime’s 25 million image collection.
Seattle photographer Christopher Boffoli has sued the popular image-sharing site for failing to remove his images after he sent the site proper DMCA notice.
Alamy has announced the opening of its first office in Australia in order to support strong growth across Australia and New Zealand.
In the olden days (20th Century) when someone wanted to promote a product of service they placed an ad (that usually included a photo) in a magazine, newspaper or on TV. Many photographers were paid substantial fees for the use of their photos in these ads. Now the future of advertising may be in social media and embedding images. See here for how this could dramatically change the market.
The results of the annual
GDUSA Stock Survey of graphic designers in the U.S. is now available online. For several years nearly every graphic designers has answered that they use stock sometime during the year, but this year, for the first time, two-thirds of those answering the survey use stock more than 20 times a year and one-third use stock imagery more than 100 times a years.
One of the most interesting panels at the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA formerly known as PACA) annual conference in New York this week was on “Opening New Markets Through Image Embedding.” Back in March Getty Images launched its
Image Embed Tool and made 35 million images available for free embedding on social media sites. That number has now jumped to about 50 million.
The Board of Directors of the
American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has announced the selection of Thomas R. Kennedy as the Society's Executive Director, effective January 1, 2015. Kennedy is an internationally known visual communicator with extensive experience in print and online journalism.
Yesterday, I made an attempt to explain what is happening in the UK with regard to making it easier for consumer to use images that are truly “orphaned,” or if it is just difficult to find the name of and locate the creator. (
See story) Today, I had the following exchange of emails with Andrea Stern, Director of MOCA: Ministry of Copyright Cultural Creators’ Assets in the UK.
As of October 1, 2014 authorized legal entities in the UK will be able to collect payments for the use of your photographs even if you are not a member of the organization. This is known as Extended Collective Licensing (ECL).
For those licensing images to textbooks National Public Radio published an interesting report recently that is
worth a listen. It was pointed out that prices for college textbooks are often over $300 and climbing faster than the cost of food, clothing, cars and even health care.
One of the arguments for licensing images as Rights Managed is that only then can they be licensed for Exclusive uses because all the uses of the images are controlled and limited. With Royalty Free customers can continue to use the images they acquire in unspecified ways long after initially licensed with very few limitations.
The
Footage Marketplace is signing up exhibitors for footageMarketplace USA’14 that will be held at the Art Directors Club in New York on November 19, 2014. The event will start at 11:00 am and continue until 7:30 pm.
Using numbers from Getty Images it is interesting to look back at the RM and RF unit sales and revenue trends over the last decade. Between 2003 and 2007 when Getty was a public company they provided investors with very precise gross revenue and average price per image figures. This made it possible to make a reasonable estimate of the number of images licensed in each category.
Footage.net has adopted Solr search technology to power its online stock footage search and screening platform. The newly deployed search engine allows Footage.net to better manage huge datasets, organize diverse metadata fields, perform a vast number of simultaneous searches and filter search results dynamically. It's also extremely fast, significantly expediting the footage search and discovery process for Footage.net's global user base.
Did you know that it is illegal to license for commercial use pictures of hundreds of the most popular, beautiful and interesting venues around the world? In many cases it is also illegal to use such pictures for editorial purposes.
Recently, Tyler Olson discovered by searching Google that one of his images (
http://netropolitanclub.com/) had been used on over 1,640 web sites. However, all these uses were not the result of multiple sales, but of a single sale to the Netropolitan Club.
Customers looking for a visual solution are turning more and more to illustration and seeking photography less and less. This does not mean that the use of photography is disappearing, but for photographers it is worrying trend. Photographers should recognize that the overall the demand for photographs, particularly for use in advertising and marketing is declining relative to the use of illustration.
In the case of
Grant Heilman Photography, Inc. vs. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. before Judge Michael M. Baylson in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania a jury has found in favor of Grant Heilman and awarded them the amount of $127,087 for the unauthorized use of a total of 53 images.
In his
Kaptur blog last week Paul Melcher pointed out that in the near future brands may want to wholly own the photography they produce so they can then give it away just as Apple did with music when they partnered with U2 to make a massive release of U2’s new “Songs of Innocence” album.
Many stock agencies focus on the number of images they have in their collections. But does the customer really care? Rather than numbers, I think the customer is looking for where they can find (1) the right image, (2) quickly and easily and (3) at a price they can afford. Often sheer numbers don’t produce the best results.