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PhotoRESEARCHER |
PhotoRESEARCHER Newsletter for August Week Five ## 443E |
KEY WORDS: | Hard Drive | Promotional Dollars | MP3 Files | Distribution | Free Trading | iStock | Shutterstock | Old-Think | Complete National Geographic | Lawsuits | Jerry Greenberg | New York Times | Tasini | Infringement | Kodak | Circuit Courts Of Appeals | NEWSWORDS: | Y'All Come | Peeking On Peiking | Costly Move | Now That's Cold! | Dollars Are Adding Up | Super Hi Rez | No Candid Camera | Get Discovered | Free Pass | Back Up | Tax Surfing In California | Wanna Join? | Bringing Value | Welcome to PhotoRESEARCHER Newsletter, a monthly newsletter from PhotoDaily, PhotoSource International. http://www.photoresearchnews.com/ To sign up for our photoRESEARCHER Newsletter, visit us online at: (If you do not wish to receive the PhotoRESEARCHER Newsletter, please
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Goodbye Big Brother; Hello Peer-to-Peer... a forerunner of what's to come...
Straight From The Hard Drive
ADVANCE NOTES: They said it would come. We wrote about it back in '95 and '96. It's royalty-based picture-selling. No, not royalty-free, but Royalty with a capital R. MP3 music files, remind us that selling direct to photobuyers may eventually be the distribution system of choice for freelance stock photographers (and photobuyers).
W e all know that big business dictates to musicians what music they should be writing and performing. Ask Tony Bennet, Angus Young, and Fergie. Unless musicians cooperate with the big label companies, who control the purse strings, they have little chance of enduring in the mainstream of commercial music. An upstart has little chance to go to the top of the charts without an infusion of promotional dollars from big business. The overall result is the production of mediocre music that the gurus at the big label companies believe appeals to the masses, the common denominator.
Too bad for the creative, inspired music that never sees the light of day. With very rare exceptions, stifled musicians either bow out of the game, or make compromises to at least part of the time toe the line set by music company executives.
THE BYPASS
Move over, executives. Hard drive to hard drive is here. Downloading MP3 files, through today’s technology, is easier than ever. No corporate executive is at the toll-gate dictating the content and style of the product.
What’s so important about all this for stock photographers and photoresearchers?
This distribution process paves the way for the possibility of an entirely new delivery method for photographers, artists, game makers, musicians, and writers, who have historically been at the mercy of middle-men to promote and distribute their work. It's called peer-to-peer. Your hard drive to my hard drive, without going through the Web.
Here's how it works. As a buyer, in the music world, to get the creative work you are looking for, you circumvent the usual distributor (label company in this case) and download the music file you're looking for from the supplier's hard drive. In our case, as stock photographers and photobuyers, it would be an image to download.
At first glance, you might think that Napster-sparked free trading of music files would cause a serious reduction in retail sales. On the contrary, it turns out to be a catalyst. Studies show that music sales have never been better. After Napster was reduced to a common sense Internet company by the courts, it evolved to a company that promotes new artists.
Could this work in our industry? The marketing part already has. Stock photo agencies such as iStock and Shutterstock, that practically give pictures away through royalty-free distribution, have found that the system both encourages on-line purchasing plus educates buyers in image utilization and fosters graduating to higher-ticket image purchasing. Usage, the saying goes, begets more usage.
THE SALES ANGLE
But wait, if photos are given away practically free, won't that discourage photographers from making images in the future?
This is a common initial apprehension. Every time a new technology has come along, the purveyors of the former technology get up-in-arms, trying to prevent the new from destroying the old. Whether radio (it was going to destroy newspapers), TV (it was going to destroy radio), cable TV (it was going to destroy network TV), or DVD's (they were going to destroy movie theaters). These media have learned to live harmoniously side by side, and everyone has benefited.
The Internet has opened the window for us to cease viewing business strategies through traditional, old-think lenses, and instead see all kinds of new possibilities. The Internet's peer-to peer possibilities open new distribution doors for creators of all products.
For stock photography freelancers, the system could work like this. Software known as "digital rights management systems" will soon become available that will allow a photobuyer to enter a photographer's computer hard drive, search for specific pictures, download them, and purchase them. The fee may be low (like with RF photography) but the volume will be high (several visitors a day). The bottom line will be that pictures that otherwise would languish in unknown corners gathering dust, will generate activity and sales.
Want to read more of this article? Go to http://www.photosource.com/researcher/misc1.html .
Derek Fell fellpix@comcat.com www.derekfell.net |
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National Geographic's Victory Is Now Complete By Joel L. Hecker, Esq. As you may recall, in 1997
National Geographic Society ("NGS") released a thirty disc
CD Rom set containing each monthly issue of the magazine for the 108
years from 1888 through 1996, a collection of some 1200 issues of the
magazine. It is called the "Complete National Geographic"
("CNG"). The CNG is an image-based reproduction of the magazine. Every page of every issue appears exactly as it did in the original paper version, including advertisements. It also contains a computer program which compresses and decompresses the images and allows the users to search an electronic index. It further contains an introductory sequence that begins when the user inserts the disc into a drive. This sequence starts with a Kodak ad, then shows a moving display of NGS’s logo and theme song, and a 25-second segment in which ten issues of actual magazine covers from past issues digitally fade into one another. Lawsuits by various photographers followed publication, most of which were consolidated in the New York Federal Court, and by Jerry Greenberg in Florida , alleging in each instance copyright infringement. Greenberg initially won his case in Florida where a jury awarded him $100,000 in statutory damages for the four images involved, or a total of $400,000. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the holding. Three months later, on June 25, 2007 , the Supreme Court decided New York Times Co. v. Tasini. This case established a new framework for application of the Section 201(c) privilege (section 201(c) of the Copyright Act), which grants to the publisher of a collective work a copyright to the collective work as a whole, while the author of an individual contribution to a collective work receives a copyright to that individual contribution. Thereafter, on March 5, 2005, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled in Faulkner v. National Geographic, a case involving substantially the same facts but different photographers, that the use of those photos in CNG was privileged under section 201(c) and therefore not an infringement. This holding created a conflict between the two Circuit Courts of Appeals and left the law muddled. The Greenberg case, which at this time was on remand from an appeal concerning the amount of damages and attorneys' fees, reached the Eleventh Circuit again. This time, Greenberg lost. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals determined, as had the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, that the Tasini decision was an intervening change in the law which occurred since the initial Greenberg decision. This required the Court to look at the issues again through the eyes of Tasini. The Eleventh Circuit then concluded that the Second Circuit was in fact correct, and that the analysis of the original Greenberg decision was now wrong in light of the Supreme Court's intervening decision. It therefore dismissed Greenberg's claims concerning the digitally reproduced issues of the magazine, vacated the jury verdict and damage award, but remanded for trial the issues concerning use of Greenberg’s photo and the Kodak ad in the introductory sequence which was not part of the original magazine issues. As a result, there is no
longer a split in the Circuit Courts of Appeals, and uniformity, for
the moment at least, now prevails in this area of the law.
Attorney Joel L. Hecker lectures and writes extensively on issues of concern to the photography industry. His office is located at Russo & Burke, 600 Third Ave , New York NY 10016 . Phone: 1 212 557-9600. E-mail: HeckerEsq@aol.com.
CHANGES Each month we report to you moves among, within and between: publishing houses, stock agencies, photobuyers, photo researchers, ad agencies, and design firms. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS (198 Madison Ave 9th Fl, New York, NY 10016) former contact, phone and e-mail: Judi DeSouter, Art Editor, 212 726-6327, judi.desouter@oup.com; current contact, phone and e-mail: Robert Carangelo, Head of Design, 212 726-6370, Robert.carangelo@oup.com.
###################### This week's featured photographer on PhotoSourceFolio: Cheryl Watkins ( http://folio.photosource.com/2963)
Michael Wootton
Watch
for developments in the field of stock photography in
PhotoResearcher's Newsletter Note: If the URL is long, it may extend to two lines. In that case - clicking on it won't work. Instead, "copy and paste" the URL. Y’ALL COME . PhotoShelter to Host First-ever Industry Town Hall Discussing the Business of Photography in the Digital Era - "Photography 2.0: The Business of Photography in the Web Era," will feature more than 30 working photographers and image buyers and is expected to be, to date, the most rigorous, challenging and productive debate concerning the issues of online marketing, image selling and distribution. http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/25811.html PEEKING ON PEIKING . Liberties advocates fear abuse of satellite
images - Spy satellites, which provide higher-resolution photographs
than commercial satellite imagery have traditionally been used overseas
to monitor terrorist movements and nuclear tests. Their
expanded use in domestic surveillance marks a new era in intelligence
gathering, conjures up images of "Big Brother in the sky,"
and raises civil liberties concerns.
http://news.com.com/Liberties+advocates+fear+ COSTLY MOVE . Getty CEO's Move Will Cost $1 Million - Getty Images says moving CEO Jonathan Klein to New York City from Seattle will cost $1 million . The company will be paying for Klein's housing, moving expenses, and related costs and income taxes. http://www.pdnpulse.com/2007/08/getty-ceos-move.html NOW THAT’S COLD! Hundreds pose naked on Swiss glacier
- Hundreds of people posed naked on Switzerland 's shrinking Aletsch
glacier on Saturday for U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick as part of
a Greenpeace campaign to raise awareness of global warming.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070818/od_uk_nm NO CANDID CAMERA . Madden Issues Photography Ban? Rocker Joel Madden has reportedly issued the paparazzi with a warning not to photograph him with women who aren't Nicole Richie! http://au.launch.yahoo.com/070820/10/1d0ay.html TAX SURFING IN CALIFORNIA . New tax guide. for California Photographers - "Tax Tips for Photographers," also known as Publication 68. http://www.pdnpulse.com/business/index.html WANNA JOIN? Talented photographers wanted - The moodboard image library with a twist launched on the 5th July with collections of both quality microstock and premium royalty free images , they are now on the hunt for great talented photographers. http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/16004/talented-photographers/ BRINGING VALUE . Commercial Photographer David Langley Joins Hallmark Institute of Photography Faculty. He served the commercial photography marketplace for over forty-five years. http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20070819/bs_prweb/prweb547524_1
TRAVELERS
ABROAD
Pamela York Shawn McGrath Claudio Bacinello
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WANT TO TEST THE POWER Of the PhotoSourceBANK ? In the GOOGLE search bar, type a description of a photograph a buyer could be looking for, then a space, and then the word photosource. Presto! Your selection will come up on page Number One of Google. More and more, photobuyers are learning this quick, easy, method of zeroing in directly to the "source" of a highly-specific photo need. Edward Wallowitch. His outstanding editorial photography inspired yours truly in the early 70’s to enter the field and begin selling images to book publishers. Wallowitch passed away some years ago, and his heirs have now decided to offer Wallowitch's entire collection for sale, to a private collector, museum, or stock library. For more information, contact John Wallowitch, 411 East 51 st Street, #1 , NYC 10022 (212) 753-5748; wallowitch@juno.com – Rohn Engh
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Benja Iglesis info@benjaiglesis.com www.benjaiglesis.com
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Ellis Vener
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