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At the CEPIC Congress in Barcelona on Wednesday June 12th there will be a discussion on a new initiative that could generate significant new revenue for image creators whose images are “crowd sourced” and posted without authorization to various domains on the Internet. This story examines the “Winston Project,” a system for collecting revenue for “Passive Image Use.” when a user uploads an image created by someone else to a “crowd sourced” domain, or when a user clicks on an image or shares it within the domain.
United Kingdom photographers are up in arms over the latest action by their government to make it legal for consumers to use their images without their permission. The
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act recently passed in the U.K. provides a way to legally use images found on the Internet when the copyright owner cannot be identified or contacted. Such images are known as “orphaned works.”
Anyone interested in a career as a photographer – as well as those photographers in mid-career -- needs to carefully consider how the business is changing. If we look at image use on the Internet it is undeniable that more images are being made available for viewing. However, for professionals this is not good news.
More image use does not mean more demand for professionally produced images. It does not mean that there will be more opportunities for photographers to earn their living taking pictures. In fact, the opportunities to earn a living as a photographer are declining. Here’s why.
ImageBrief has raised a $700,000 round of financing from Square Peg’s Paul Bassat and Justin Liberman as well as other Australian investors. Originally based in Australia, the company has raised $2.2 million thus far.
Serban Enache, CEO of Dreamstime has explained in a
blog post how Google’s new image search techniques make it more likely that unauthorized use of your images will increase. Every image producer should read this story.
The ever increasing demand for instant and breaking news images and the huge improvement in the quality of phone and compact camera photographs has prompted
Alamy to begin accepting photographs for its Live News service from mobile (cell) phone cameras and compact cameras.
In the growing clamor and uproar about the free images available through Google Drive Rick Becker-Leckrone, CEO of Blend Images, made some points on the
Stockphoto blog that are worth examining. See the
previous article for more background.
This is the third in a series of articles on the image collection that is available to Google Drive users. (It looks like there may be many more articles as more details unfold.) To see the first two articles go
here and
here. This is not just a microstock issue. Hundreds of traditionally priced RF images are involved.
Stipple and PEOPLE are joining together to help fans learn more about the stars photographed on the red carpet at The Critics’ Choice Movie Awards held on Thursday, January 10, at 8pm EST. Photographers will receive extra compensation when consumer purchase products the stars wear.
The New York Times reports that late Thursday Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder said, that where advertising was concerned, the company would revert to its previous terms of service that have been in effect since October 2010.
On December 17th
Instagram proposed dramatic changes in its "terms of service" that would give the company the right to sell users' photos without payment or notification, effective January 16, 2013. This sparked immediate outrage and revolt among Instagram contributors. Many started removing images from the site. The next day Instagram reversed itself and pledged to “remove” the language that sparked the revolt.
Is it possible to earn money by giving your images away for Free? With Stipple the answer is Yes! 40% of searches on the Internet today happen outside of search engines like Google. People discover what they are looking for via blogs, Tweets, Facebook and in general, just browsing around. With Stipple when they find your image they can also find you.
Think there are too many pictures on the Internet. The number is about to explode. About a year ago a team of Sweden’s most innovative and experienced entrepreneurs, its foremost camera electronics engineer, and an industrial designer decided people needed an easier way to create searchable, shareable memories. They believe we tend to forget some of the best things we experience because there is no record. They set out to change all that and started Memoto, a company with the goal of giving everyone true photographic memory.
Today more than a quarter of all photos taken are taken on smartphones. No longer is the mobile phone just a communication device. Now users can take pictures with their phones anywhere, anytime without worrying about heavy equipment or camera settings. As of this month
Dreamstime has started accepting both editorial and commercial pictures that are shot using a mobile phone.
One of the programs at the recent PACA International Conference asked five industry visionaries to explore emerging trends and predict what the stock photo business will be like in 2022. There was general agreement that the current business model of licensing based on usage is
broken and that in a few years (probably a lot less than 10) it will be necessary to develop a completely different approach to licensing.
Shutterstock has introduced a new
Portfolio Page feature that allows contributors to organize their collection into sets they want to feature. Once a significant number of contributors have taken advantage of this opportunity Shutterstock will encourage their customers to check out the galleries and image sets that their contributors have created.
After Hurricane Sandy many news organizations will be thinking hard about covering breaking news events with iPhone’s and delivering the images via Instagram. Kira Pollack, Director of Photography for Time Magazine, hired five professional photographers to cover the event with their iPhones rather than their digital SLRs. By delivering the images via Instagram Time was able to show customers a more comprehensive report faster that would have been possible with a traditional approach to the assignment.
If we want to reduce copyright infringements we must make it easier for people to be honest. Reasoned education is not working. Aggressive pursuit of infringements is not slowing the number of infringements. This story suggests three steps that are technologically possible today and which the industry ought to be exploring.
Last year a positive partnership between content creators and internet service providers (ISPs) was created to better educate internet users on legal options for receiving entertainment content online and to inform consumers who repeatedly engage in infringement that their actions are inappropriate. Now they are ready to launch the Copyright Alert System.
Last weeks
announcement that PACA, ASMP and CCC are considering some type of arrangement that would compensate image creators for the unauthorized web usage of their images on sites like Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, etc. needs careful examination by all photographers and distributors before anything is formalized.
Last month we wrote about
Scoopshot a site where any photographer can submit cell phone pictures for editorial use. The company has been in business for about 18 months and has over 130,000 contributors from 165 different countries. Now Scoopshot has added an option that allows editors to identify and give assignments to a select group of photographers that produce professional quality work.
Last week we wrote about the new Getty Images initiative
Post-Usage-Billing Service (PUBS). On Thursday Craig Peters, Senior Vice President of Business Development for Getty spoke at the Luminance event in New York and shared some additional insights. He spoke of the dilemma the photo industry faces in protecting copyright and how Getty’s new initiative can solve at least part of the problem.
PicScout has announced the launch of the ImageIRC Post-Usage-Billing Service designed to assure photographers and content licensors that their work will be properly acknowledged on social media platforms which embrace the ImageIRC Post Usage Billing solution.
Pocketstock has created a new pricing strategy call Bidder that enables each customer to establish the price he or she is willing to pay for a royalty free image.
On its
Google Drive cloud storage service Google has added a feature that will allow its customers to use
Thinkstock photos for FREE. They are currently asking their customers to suggest photos that they would like to see included in this gallery of free photos.