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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.”
Last week we wrote about the
miniscule royalties that appeared on Getty’s February royalty statements. Many Getty Connect sales showed a royalty of $0.00.
Getty has acknowledged that they made a rounding error on the recent statements and will report micro-royalties in fractions of a cent up to 5 decimal points in the future. Conceivably, a photographer could earn $0.00001 (one thousandth of a cent) for one license.
Getty Images makes it hard for some customers to purchase RM images. See what I learned when I tried to license usage of 4 images from Getty. We complain about the unauthorized use of images online and then we make it almost impossible for many potential image users to find out how to license images legitimately.
Shutterstock has released an
infographic that forecasts several design trends for the year ahead. In 2012 Shutterstock delivered 76 million image downloads giving them a wealth of data from which to draw conclusions.
Last summer Getty Images launched an API initiative called Connect by Getty Images that made it possible for then to collect a share of the advertising revenue when an ad appears on a page where a Getty Image is shown. One of the first companies to use the API was Yahoo. In the February statements Getty is reporting royalties from some of the early pay-per-view deals. The numbers being reported have alarmed a number of Getty’s contributors.
In January the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report on Media and Information that provides some interesting insights into the photography business. Median still photographer income in U.S. is $28,860. The median for TV and video camera operators is over $40,000 and almost $53,000 for Film and Video editors.
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.
Instagram has taken another shot at updating their Terms of Service. Peter Krogh, author of the DAM (Digital Assets Management) Book and Chair of ASMP’s Digital Standards Committee has reviewed the new terms and concluded that for the professional photographer trying to earn a living they are “still terrible.” Read his very thorough analysis
here.
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.
iStock has provided an explanation on Google Drive issues described in my
previous post. The following was posted on the iStock forum late yesterday.
Sean Locke (one of iStock’s highest earning contributors) discovered recently that some of his best selling images are now available on GoogleDrive for
FREE. There is a major thread in the
iStock forum. I’ll try to summarize what seems to be known so far.
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.
Alamy has launched Alamy iQ, a service designed to help customers better manage all the visual assets they own or have licensed rights to use. Alamy iQ will be particularly beneficial to global organizations that have people sourcing visual assets from many locations for a variety of uses. It will complement or replace existing asset management systems, help speed decision making and eliminate risk.
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.
Foap, the site that licenses crowdsourced travel images taken by iPhone user, has received an additional $500,000 in funding from Jade Global Investments. David Los, co-founder of Foap, attributes the company’s growth to a first-mover advantage in offering iPhone users an opportunity to monetize photos already stored on their phones.
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.
Bigstock, a division of Shutterstock, has introduced a new
partner program that will allow companies like email service providers, website design services and online ad builders to offer Bigstock photos to their customers through their portals.
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.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google have announced a settlement agreement that will provide the Google Library Project with access to books and journals that are still protected by copyright. Now, Google may digitize new books as well as make the contents of books already scanned available online.
Dreamstime has become the latest professional photography service to resolve its legal issues regarding the pinning of copyright-protected, watermarked images shared on
Pinterest. The solution incorporates an attribution line, which now appears beneath the photo in question and links back to the photo’s page on Dreamstime.com. This is the same solution that Pinterest offers to other members of its “attribution program,” including Flickr, YouTube, 500px, Etsy, and others.
For more than 30 years “Collecting Societies” in many countries have had systems to compensate photographers when their images in books and periodicals are photocopied. U.S. photographers are not so fortunate.
The Picture Archive Council of America (
PACA), American Society of Media Photographers (
ASMP) and the Copyright Clearance Center (
CCC) are jointly exploring the development of a new, global, collective licensing model for unlicensed web usages. PACA expects this model to have a transformative impact on the industry for all licensors of visual media.
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.
iStock has made it official. They are encouraging contributors to shoot with cell phones and accepting those images into the general collection. The next generation of stock photography – from RM to RF to Microstock to Cell Phones -- is upon us. See iStock’s
Creative Brief.
In web advertising what produces the best results still photos or videos? You may be surprised. This story outlines some of the things that are happening that will change the way customers choose their images and some of the things you can do to increase sales.