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RANDOM THOUGHTS 10
July 7, 1999
TSI Production Shoots
TSI is now asking some of their photographers to do production shoots where the company pays a day
rate and all expenses. In addition to the day rate the photographer will also receive a 10% royalty
from sales for ten years. After the ten years the photographer the copyright would revert to the
photographer. If TSI continues to sell the image in would be on the 10% royalty basis. One
photographer was told that the day rate other photographers were willing to accept
was $800.
By way of comparison, Mark Austin of Digital Vision insists that in London he can
get all the photographers he wants to do "buyout" shoots for him for $1,000 a day.
Video Pirates
The Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) says filmmakers lose $250 million
a year to video pirates in the U.S. and the worldwide losses exceed $2 billion.
According to Chris Hansen on NBC's Dateline, last year MPAA helped police seize more
than half a million bootlegged videos and thousands of cassette recorders.
Jack Valenti, president of MPAA says of video pirating, "It's like the head of
Medusa. You cut off one snake, and two grow in its place. It's a never-ending
fight."
Hansen said, "While federal copyright statutes make it a felony to produce and
distribute pirated videos, few convicted pirates are severely punished." It is
not a crime to buy pirated videos so the consumer is doing nothing illegal, only
the seller.
Web Advertising
If you had any doubt about whether web sites are revenue generators for the major
publishers consider the following:
Electronic Business Magazine
If you have provided images to Electronic Business in the past couple of years there
is a good chance your photos are on the web site. Check it out at:
www.ebtmag.com/registrd/issue.htm#1 .
Many photographers are getting additional compensation for web use.
Lifting Images Off The Net
A meeting planner for Bell South got a rude awakening when he arrived in Honolulu to
set up ten 6'x6' murals to decorate the site. To produce the murals he had searched
the web, found some pictures, right clicked on the images and saved the files to
disc. He then took these files and digitally output them to 6'x6' murals.
It appears he thought, "They are only going to be up for three or four hours, the
only people who will see them are the people at the hotel. The photographer will
never know."
As it turns out, the photographer makes his living selling fine art photos of Hawaii
-- and his gallary is in the hotel where Bell South was holding its meetings.
When he got to the hotel and realized that there was a great likelihood that the
photographer would see the image, he contacted the photographer and tried to obtain
permission to use the pictures. He claimed that anything that you can "right click"
on and save from the web is a public domain picture.
The photographer presented the planner with a bill the planner found unacceptable.
Then the planner tried to get the hotel to apply pressure on the photographer in an
attempt to get permission to use the images for an unacceptably low price.
In the end the pictures were never shown at the meeting. No one knows whether the
meeting planner will be working for Bell South next year.
New RF Site
Another new Royalty Free site has appeared online and you can review it at
www.royaltyfreeonline.com. It has images from RubberBall Productions, Classic PIO
Partners, Hollingsworth Studios, Image Farm, Transmission Digital Publishers and
Visual Language.
Is It Time For A Union?
If your doctor has to join a union in order to protect himself from the managed care
operators, maybe it is time for photographers to begin thinking about unionization.
Rate Increases
One way to look at proposed rate increases is that editorial photographers are not
raising rates. Rather, they are simply asking magazines to pay for all the rights
they have been freely appropriating. For years magazines have been grabbing extra rights
that were never expected to be included under the definition of "one-time use."