Associations
Back in February European Union antitrust regulators reached a
settlement with Google in an unfair competition investigation that had been going on since 2010.
The
Palm Beach Photographic Centre (PBPC), has invited the public to participate in the
National Press Photographers Association (NPPA)
2014 Best of Journalism Awards Show on August 8th and a full Education + Community Day on August 9th with TED-style panel discussions.
Every year CEPIC brings together picture agencies from all over the world and becomes, for a few days, the Center of the Picture Industry. This year's Congress had over 500 participants from 35 countries and 280 agencies. It was held in the heart of Berlin, a few blocks away from the Brandenburger Tor.
PACA has just released a summary of it Sales Webinar that was conducted in May. The panel consisted of Leslie Hughes from Visual Steam, Candice Murray for Condé Nast and Sonia Wasco from Grant Heilman Photography. You can see the notes and view the power point presentation from the webinar
here.
PACA, the Digital Media Licensing Association, has announced that Steve Spelman, incoming PACA President for the 2014 to 2016 term, has made the decision to resign from his position after leaving Corbis. Sarah Fix who has been serving as Vice President will take over the President's duties.
The
CEPIC Congress in Berlin will start in about a week. Many of the attendees will be focused on finding other agents to represent and market their collections. For the most part that means that smaller libraries will be trying to get their small collection included in the massive collection of larger distributor (LD). Maybe it should be the other way around.
More than that 500 participants from more than 250 agencies and 33 countries will attend the CEPIC Congress in Berlin from June 5th through June 7th 2014. If you are not planning to attend check out what you will be missing.
The annual general meeting of the German Association of Professional Image Suppliers (
BVPA) has voted with a strong majority (only one dissenting vote) against supporting the
CEPIC projects CIF and RDI. The panel came to the conclusion that the expected benefits of the projects, as presented at the meeting, do not outweigh the expected expense and risks.
The European News Agency Alliance (
EANA) has joined the global coalition that supports a formal antitrust complaint against Google’s that has been filed with at the EU Commission. The complaint deals with the
unlicensed use of third party pictures and was filed by
CEPIC on 8 November 2013 on behalf of thousands of photographers and picture agencies.
The Association of Commercial Stock Image Licensors (
ACSIL), a trade association serving the interests of the world’s leading archival footage and stock licensors, has announced its newly elected Co-Presidents: Max Segal and Clara Fon-Sing.
The
CEPIC Congress scheduled to be held in Berlin on June 4 through 7, 2014 is less than 2 months away. Already nearly 350 stock photo agents and industry suppliers are signed up to attend. For a full conference program see
here.
PACA’s mission has always been to support a healthy and sustainable market for licensing the use of photographic images, as well as to encourage and support innovative ways for photography to be legally used in the rapidly changing marketplace. Clearly, models for licensing of photography have had a difficult time keeping pace with changes brought on by the Internet, social media, and the blogosphere.
Photographers, illustrators, Getty’s Image Partners (stock agencies), and trade associations representing Getty photographers should be asking Getty to supply creators with a limited amount of the data collected when Getty embeds creator's images on a web site for
FREE.
Recently PACA published a letter from Past President Robert Henson about how Microsoft “has taken the bold step of promoting the theft of images online. Through its newly revamped
Office product.” Through its “Office Help” function Microsoft advised users looking for images to “Use Bing to get images.” Bing made finding images easy and implied that anything found was free to use.
Judge Denny Chin in Southern District of New York has ruled that Google Books provides a
public benefit and is a
fair use of copyrighted material. He ruled that the Google Books project doesn’t violate copyright law and dismissed the eight-year-old lawsuit against Google.
As happens every fall there is a whirlwind of photo conferences – PACA Annual Conference, Visual Connection and PhotoPlusExpo (all in New York), and this year Microstock Expo in Berlin. In light of everything I’ve seen and heard between October 20 and November 17, 2013 I’ve provided a few observations as to where I think the stock photo industry is headed.
On behalf of thousands of photographers and picture agencies CEPIC, the Center of the Picture Industry has submitted a formal antitrust complaint against Google’s use of third-party images before the European Commission. The complaint was submitted on 8 November 2013 and supported by an unprecedented coalition of European and US trade associations representing thousands of photographers and picture agencies worldwide.
The stock visual media industry is seeing a pick-up after the longest downturn in living memory. Visual Connections New York, the world’s largest marketing event devoted to commercial licensing of visual media, drew more buyers and exhibitors this year than in 2012. Buyers could learn about 72 different stock agency brands from around the world, including 21 new to New York and 22 from outside the US (Canada, UK, Germany, Sweden and Argentina).
Stock photography is changing rapidly. The most serious issues facing stock photographers are:
they have no idea who their potential customers are;
they don’t know what their customers are looking for in the way of images; and
they don’t understand how their customer’s businesses are changing.
Given the changing and growing demands publishers are facing when developing an educational program, PACA’s Editorial Relations Committee and Cengage Learning have worked together to create a new “Preferred Provider” Insert License Agreement that helps meet the publisher’s needs while providing image vendors of a better understanding of how their images are being used.
Art Directors and Graphic Designers lament the
decline in creativity. They say this results from a lack of Time and a lack of Funding which leads to a lack of Inspiration. 75% say they have too many competing priorities to leave time for reflection.
The American Society of Media Photographers, joined by National Press Photographers Association (
NPPA), The Digital Media Licensing Association (
PACA), American Photographic Artists (
APA), This Week in Photography (
TWiP), Professional Photographers of America (
PPA), Coordination of European Picture Agencies Stock, Press and Heritage (
CEPIC), Graphic Artists Guild (
GAG) and American Society of Picture Professionals (
ASPP), has mounted a campaign to address the far-reaching Terms of Use of the image sharing service Instagram.
ASMP has published “
The Instagram Papers,” a very valuable analysis of Instagram Terms of Service. Every photographer who is considering posting images on Instagram, wants to retain control of his/her images and hopefully earn some money from them should be familiar with the information in this report.
Alfonso Gutiérrez, President of CEPIC has provided some updated information on the CEPIC Image Registery (CIR) that Selling Stock reported on earlier
here and
here. See his report.
PACA has changed its name to
PACA, The Digital Media Licensing Association. While the name Picture Archive Council of America has served the organization well, it has become apparent that it no longer accurately reflects today’s photography licensing business, or the membership of the organization.