Your Digital Photos Are Too Professional

ScentCone writes "AP's technology writer Brian Bergstein reports that your 8 megapixel camera, and lukewarm+ lens/Photoshop skills may keep you from getting over the counter image printing services. Professional photographers have successfully sued processors (like Wal-Mart) for reproducing their digital works without permission. Clerks are now being told to deny print orders for some work that looks too good. Talented amateurs are having to jump through hoops, present documents, and otherwise cajole teenage cashiers into taking their orders. No doubt one successful suit costs more than a thousand denied amateurs' orders, but sheesh. On the other hand, pro wedding photographers depend mightily on the income derived from reproducing their work, and it will take time for things to evolve to the point where clients are willing to pay a lot more up front in exchange for wider image rights after the fact. There's no well-supported digital equivalent to a negative (as reasonable proof of ownership), so retailers are defensively resorting to near paranoia to stay out of court."

Comments

Piracy

[MyLongNickName]

A search of my comment history will show I am very anti-piracy. But stuff like this makes me feel lke telling everyone to go download every freaking copyrighted photo on the net and send to all your friends.

Big brother ridiculous.

I call bullshit

[rainman_bc]

I'm going through a very good professional photographer: http://www.tyingtheknot.net

We are paying a fair sum, but we get all the digital negatives to reproduce. As far as he's concerned, he's finished with us when he's given us our proof album.

Conventional photographers hose people to develop prints. they can charge up to $20 for an 8x10 that you can develop in a store for $5...

I like that we can produce as many prints as we like royalty-free. As long as we don't seek to profit off our pictures. If we do, we need to let him know. IMO that's VERY reasonable, and I feel it would be only fair to compensate him.

Our photographer btw, has been featured in many wedding magazines. He's a classy photographer who has no need to hose his customers.

This actually happed to me

[3ryon]

I had been boycotting WM for years, but I was in a pinch to print out a few photos and my sister had convinced me that WM made good prints cheap. I decided to give it a whirl. First, I stood around like an idiot for 10 minutes for my 5 prints (5 different pics) while the machine said "Processing". After I finally complained and the clerk noticed that it was out of paper. Mind you, if the fscking machine had told me that it was out of paper I could have done something about it.

When I finally get the prints they need to be cut (they printed with about a 1.5" margin). I hand them to the clerk to cut them and he then asks me if I own the copyright to these pics.

I give a surprised, "Yes."

Clerk: Can you prove that you own the copyright.

Me: No. (Looking at him as though he'd asked me for an aardvark)

Clerk: Then I can't sell this pictures to you.

Me: Look, I took the pictures, I have the files. I own the copyright. How could I possible "prove" to you that the copyright is mine?

Clerk: I can't sell you the pics unless you can prove that you have the copyright.

Me: (very annoyed rant about asking for something I can't possibly provide) You know what, piss off! I want to see you shread the whole lot.

I went and complained to the manager who offered to get me my prints, but I told her that I didn't want to do anymore business with them.

Antiquated Business Model

[DeanFox]

It's an invalid copyright premise I don't recognize. Assuming the photographer is not God, my image is not their intellectual property.

I just read a /. on game programmers complaining that voice over actors are demanding rights that are totally unrealistic. That's the way I feel about photographers who think they own an image I've paid them to record.

The way my brain works is that everything I have paid for, I own. The automatic assignment of copyright for only particular acts of creation, as in photography, is protectionism.

Someone at McDonalds has labored night and day to create for me the Big Mac. It's a creation of immense intellect. But, after I've paid for it, I'll be damned if I need their permission to eat it.

If you look around the room you're sitting in, everything reflecting light is a product of someone's intellect. How often to you ask permission from the Standard company to take a dump? What do you mean it's "your" toilet? When was the last time you asked your automobile "creator" if you could fill your tank with petrol? Or the drywall creator if it was okay to put a nail in "his" drywall so you can hang a picture in your own home?

I'm not going to respect any law that says a photographer still owns an image that I've paid them to record. I'm Sorry. If they want to try and water mark it, I'll PhotoShop it out. If Walmart won't print it, I'll go somewhere else.

Maybe this is starting to sound trollish. But I'm starting to get sick and tired of this copyright protectionism and people claiming they still own something after I have paid them for it.

I understand photographers think that all I have paid for is one piece of paper when I pay them to record an image. Respectfully, I disagree. When I pay a photographer to record an image, I own the product I've paid for, the image I have paid them to record.

Just because that's how I think, doesn't necessarily make it right. But, because it's the way I think, I'll ignore any pseudo claim photographers make on a product they want me to pay for yet they still want to own.

I wish I could get away with that. I sell my car in the Autotrader and I'm paid $5000.00 but I still own it. I think the photographers should go for it so long as they can get away with it. But I think they're seeing that technology is making their antiquated business model, well... antiquated.