Marlowe
Sep-11-2008, 01:39 PM
Hi , I'm an event photog in Canada and I've generously (I thought) offered to donate (with a few restrictions - I made myself clear on limited rights) a few high-res jpegs for promo ONLY for a local event which will attract national attention within the cycling community. The organizer emailed me back with the following:
"basically we are fine with your terms except for the period of time. We expect that those people who use the functions we finance to take photographs of for personal or news purposes to give us unlimited length of use licence for promotion of our activities; advertising, promotion and/or editorial usage. While every effort will be made to give photo credit, it cannot be guaranteed. These terms have been acceptable even to news photographers with the caveat that if a photo they take is sold to another body we won't use it without ensuring first that such use doesn't breach the licence they issued to the buying body. It is the photographer's obligation to notify us of limitation of use. Hopefully this is acceptable to yourself.
Jon, we do not grant sponsors rights to use the photos for two primary reasons:
- to date there has not been a contract between ourselves and our sponsors for permission to use other than in company internal communications ("see what we're involved with" news and marketing reports communications) and
- because the waiver signed by all participants limits the use of their images to that of promoting the sport but does not grant said rights for commercial purposes such as endorsements.
Note, do not take from this correspondence that we do grant any photographer rights to take photos of individuals at our events for commercial non news purposes. Note, just because we do not charge admission to our events that we do not have copyright to them and the images arising from them. But currently we feel the rights to use said images issue is between yourself and the person whose image you took and it is not a matter that we wish to get involved with. Jon, I don't wish to get into a discussion of rights to use images from such forms other than to say my copyright lawyer has Quebec case law where an individual has successfully sued for such breach of their likeness rights when the photo was taken in a public, streetscape venue. To put it into context, it was an image photographed by a professional and latter used in an advertising campaign so the sums were worth suing for versus a few dollars for copies of a photo like you are charging.
Jon as mentioned hopefully these terms are acceptable to you. If yes, we prefer raw, uncropped images, the largest file size possible and if and when you post them to the FTP site kindly identify the folder as "photocredit - copyright photographer's name".
Thank you"
Just wondered what you all thought of this or if you've heard this before. Whould you be OK with this? It's the 2nd last paragraph in particular that bothers me. I've done other events for which I've been paid, NO problems. I thought I was providing a service shooting numerous local events (a few organised by this person) for which I have many online albums. As a photographer granting limited use of MY photos ( for FREE!) I thought I was the one who dictated the terms.
Any thoughts/recommendations? This event is two months from now.
Jon
"basically we are fine with your terms except for the period of time. We expect that those people who use the functions we finance to take photographs of for personal or news purposes to give us unlimited length of use licence for promotion of our activities; advertising, promotion and/or editorial usage. While every effort will be made to give photo credit, it cannot be guaranteed. These terms have been acceptable even to news photographers with the caveat that if a photo they take is sold to another body we won't use it without ensuring first that such use doesn't breach the licence they issued to the buying body. It is the photographer's obligation to notify us of limitation of use. Hopefully this is acceptable to yourself.
Jon, we do not grant sponsors rights to use the photos for two primary reasons:
- to date there has not been a contract between ourselves and our sponsors for permission to use other than in company internal communications ("see what we're involved with" news and marketing reports communications) and
- because the waiver signed by all participants limits the use of their images to that of promoting the sport but does not grant said rights for commercial purposes such as endorsements.
Note, do not take from this correspondence that we do grant any photographer rights to take photos of individuals at our events for commercial non news purposes. Note, just because we do not charge admission to our events that we do not have copyright to them and the images arising from them. But currently we feel the rights to use said images issue is between yourself and the person whose image you took and it is not a matter that we wish to get involved with. Jon, I don't wish to get into a discussion of rights to use images from such forms other than to say my copyright lawyer has Quebec case law where an individual has successfully sued for such breach of their likeness rights when the photo was taken in a public, streetscape venue. To put it into context, it was an image photographed by a professional and latter used in an advertising campaign so the sums were worth suing for versus a few dollars for copies of a photo like you are charging.
Jon as mentioned hopefully these terms are acceptable to you. If yes, we prefer raw, uncropped images, the largest file size possible and if and when you post them to the FTP site kindly identify the folder as "photocredit - copyright photographer's name".
Thank you"
Just wondered what you all thought of this or if you've heard this before. Whould you be OK with this? It's the 2nd last paragraph in particular that bothers me. I've done other events for which I've been paid, NO problems. I thought I was providing a service shooting numerous local events (a few organised by this person) for which I have many online albums. As a photographer granting limited use of MY photos ( for FREE!) I thought I was the one who dictated the terms.
Any thoughts/recommendations? This event is two months from now.
Jon