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The Art of Intellectual Property
dpilgrim writes "When digital technology meets intellectual property, most of the attention focuses on the movie industry or the music business. I was surprised to discover how much of an impact there is in smaller areas like professional photography, and put together some reflections on my experience." This is why when I get married I want to make sure I contract only for the photographer's labor.
The problem is this: she is still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for viewing and distributing photographs was as a print on paper.
The problem is this: they are still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for listening to and distributing music was as a casette tape.
Our photographer thinks she is in the business of providing high quality printed photographs. In fact she is in the image-capturing business, and as the business shifts from printed to digital format, she will either adapt or fail.
The RIAA thinks they are in the business of providing high quality music CDs. In fact they are in the audio-distribution business, and as the business shifts from CD to pure digital format, they will either adapt or fail.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
Just like with source code -- it is up to to the producer of the source/photograph to decide what copyright terms to attach to the product. You don't like the terms, go elsewhere. Once this gets off the ground there will be photographers (or artists in general) making "Open Art", and there will be the ones making "Closed Art." You can't get on a high-horse and say that "Art Wants To Be Free" or anything like that.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Guests at a wedding take lots of photographs, but they are all the same. You get a million shots of the couple cutting the cake, but not many of Aunt May together with Uncle Bruce. As the article says the wedding photographer also composes shots that other people copy.
The other thing is: never hire a friend to take your wedding photographs. Your friends are there to enjoy themselves. One of my friends hired another friend to take the wedding photos. Something went wrong and the photos were never delivered. Those old friends are still not talking. Don't be cheap, hire a pro!
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
This is not quite like the popular topic of the RIAA and free access to your own music. First, you are dealing directly with an artist, not a representative of an industry (i.e., RIAA). For RIAA, it is all about the money. For an artist, it is about their work, effort and yes, the soul they put into the final product. You will never see an open source concept for artists. This is why artist freak out when their work is displayed in a disparing manner (see VARA (Visual Artist Rights Act). Definitely a European concept, but it has caught on in America (There was a big stink a while ago of a sculptors works being displayed in a disparging manner in a building and also a big stink put up by the artist who made the original of that "living sculptor" at the end of "The Devil's Advocate"). Open Source is a great concept, but there is a middle road too between it and Microsoft, as well as areas where I don't think you will see it enter (such as open source art). -A
1)You are a work for hire
2)The sitter owns his image
Your copywrong is nixed.
"Frequently artists will even retain the right to borrow the painting for purposes such as exhibition"
Not if you don't get past my shotgun.
I hope you don't use BSD or Linux with your attitude on the "IP".
If you ask him his opinion on "Intellectual property", he'll simply ask you to be specific. It's a bit like my asking you your opinion on "Computers". Or what is your opinion of "Politics". You can randomly choose one aspects of these things, I suppose, but you can't really answer the question correctly.
Incidently, to show how absurd the term "Intellectual Property" has become, a bottle of Soy Sauce I bought recently has a big warning on the back: "Intellectual Property Rights Reserved". What the hell does that mean? Legally, it's nonsensical, as IP doesn't realy mean anything, but refers to a wide class of legal constructs. And how it could apply to a bottle of Soy Sauce is beyond me - the title and logo might be Trademarked, but there's no reason to have this odd disclaimer on the bottle to support that.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Here's the deal: If you don't have to pay for it, you won't. And if you don't have to pay for an inferior version, then you will get the freebie and skip the superior one.
Photographers know this. It's fundamentally the same as the MP3 craze. What would you rather have, free low-quality MP3 format songs or high fidelity CD audio for $15 per album? Too many people choose the freebie, and thus less money to those who produce the content.
When you hire a photographer to take pictures, you are paying them for 2 services: 1-their time and effort. 2-whatever photographs you eventually decide to purchase. A professional photographer cannot hope to make a living on only the labor fee. Thus, photographers are beginning to limit the availability of proofs. Photography is a profession from the time when it took a hell of a lot of skill and experience to "capture the moment". Now, in an age where we have a cheap and inferior substitute to "analog" photography, the profession is finding itself in a vulnerable position.
10 years ago when you hired a photographer and bought prints, you were effectively buying a service and product that could not be easily or cheaply reproduced. In effect you weren't buying the rights to the picture itself, but a copy of the picture. Nowadays, you are still in spirit buying the printed photo itself, but you now have the power to copy them as much as you please, almost for free. How can artists compete with that? By A: charging more and B: limiting your ability to make high-res copies of THEIR artwork.
I also take offense to the comparison of "closed/open source" with the photographic medium. The primary positive philosophy behind open-source development is that when the original data is open to view and modification, it can be IMPROVED by the author's peers. This is completely at odds with the digital photography issue. The original data (the negatives/proofs) of a photo session can't be openly analyzed and improved by the photographer's peers. It can only be freely copied by the user.
IMO, this is a decently written, but very misguided commentary. You don't pay artists for all rights to a picture. You pay them for the limited quantity of paper images you receive. Hell, I guess you could buy the rights to the initial image, but if this were to become the case in the future, expect professional photos and negatives to cost much, much more.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
If the photographer profits from selling additional copies, then he should do the basic work for free. The low-quality samples provided should be treated as a sales catalog. The couple who got married should be treated as models, they shouldn't have to pay anything for the production, and should get part of the profit from the sale of additional copies.
Suppose it was a fashion magazine which had a photo of, let's say Cindy Crawford, on the cover. Would ms. Crawford have to pay for the whole production and not get anything from the magazine sales? Saying Cindy Crawford is famous and her image is worth a lot is not an answer, since, if one can sell pictures from a couple who is getting married, then they are professional models, deserving as much respect as Cindy Crawford, only their image would not be worth exactly as much as Cindy's, since it would sell less copies.
Or have you never heard that saying?
The problem here is that the photographer is trying to charge for the wrong part of the work. The photographer is trying to charge high prices for the easy part of the work - making copies - and keep prices low for the hard part of the work - setting up a good pose with good lighting and a good background - because the technology used to allow this pricing model.
It has become too easy for the customer to do his own copying, and the pricing plan needs to change to reflect the current realities. The high-cost part of this should be showing up at the wedding and setting up the shots. The resulting photographs should be supplied at close to actual cost, because that isn't the hard part of this. And none of this crap about how making the album is art, that's a cookie-cutter operation, pull out one set of photos and put in the next set.
I do agree, this isn't an issue of "open sourcing". This is an issue of not recognizing where your "art" is, and charging properly for it. Trying to charge for a package with a built-in (false!) assumption that people will come back to you for re-prints is not recognizing the realities of the business.
And yes, I *do* strongly object to being told I have to pay again and again and again for a picture of me. No, I paid for you to set up the shot. The resulting shot belongs to me.
I paid for your expertise at arranging the shots, not your abiltiy to make copies of pictures.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
You found, and negotiated with a photographer who would transfer the copyright of the images to you.
The cost of the reprints may seem high to someone who takes their film to the corner drug store for processing, but the cost of having a professional color lab make high quality enlargements of medium format negatives is a lot more expensive than what you pay at the drug store.
In reality, most photographers these days do make money from the reprints, but probably not as much as you might think.
I do agree, however, that given current conditions, perhaps multiple business models could be used. Many people who don't want to hassle making their own high quality scans and/or prints will still want things done the "old fashioned" way (my parents would certainly want it that way, they don't even have a computer at home), and, OTOH, more tech-savvy users will want a CD-ROM with hi-res images and then make reprints themselves (I'd prefer this myself).
A photographer could offer both models to potential customers, with the second approach being more heavily "front loaded" in terms of the fees since he/she knows that there won't be much income from reprints. One way or another, the photographer needs to get paid for their time and their artistic input to the end result, and earn an amount of money commensurate with the value associated with profesisonally taken photographs. Although I might want the option of the hi-res CD approach if it better fits my style of doing things, I shouldn't expect that it should necessarily be cheaper to get the images that way.