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« Under cover of the noise | The trouble makers »

Guilty

If you thought that the money you had given to this or that photo trade organization was useful, think again. ASMP, APA, EP, PPA, WHNPA, SA, and all of the other siblings are guilty of the same crime. Silence. Chris Usher has lost his appeal after a seven year battle against Corbis and each of his 12,640 images lost will be compensated for a lousy $7.00 a piece.

(see previous post for more detailed explanation)

This ruling means that from now on, any agency, any magazine, any publisher will never have to worry about losing your photographs, since it will cost them peanuts to pay you back. It will be cheaper for them to trash them then returning them to you.

Also guilty are PDN, supposedly a trade news magazine, and other photography blogs, that are more interested in getting volumes of traffic to please their advertiser rather than report fairly on this industry.

They should all be put on the wall of shame for ignoring one of the longest and possibly important case in modern photography. Chris Usher was maybe crazy to take on the infinite cash Corbis but he did what he thought was a fair battle and lost. Not just because he couldn’t afford a legal team as powerful as the Bill Gates funded Corbis, but also because everyone ignore his battle, probably thinking it was a personal one.

In times where it is even more challenging to be a photographer than ever before, it is sad to see how helpless this industry has become, especially on the photographer’s side. It is sad to see how apathetic everyone is in face of challenges that will surely, one day, affect them too. Finally, it sad to see that, in the face of adversity, a photographer has no friends.

This entry was posted on April 12, 2009 at 12:34 pm and is filed under photojournalism, license, copyright, finance, transaction, news, law, editorial, corbis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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4 Responses to “Guilty”

  1. Jeffrey89 says:
    April 13, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    This is a mess.
    I testified in open court in Grace v. Corbis I was qualified as an expert witness to value his archive with thousands of images missing. I worked on an analysis and presented cogently my point of view that not every image was worth $1500 or $2000, but some were worth more and other less, others would only become more value with time and sometime publication didnt make them super valuable either. I ranked images in a three tier system and judge didnt get it. He claimed my testimony was nonsensical and evasive. When Grace won on appeal the court took the judge to task for not discarding the expert testimony and instead trying to come to his own nonsensical formula. These kind of cases need constant vigilance and only thru testimony at trial will we be able to prevail. This is not over.

  2. darylpsu says:
    April 14, 2009 at 11:28 am

    Paul, PDN has published dozens of stories about Corbis vs. Usher and other cases of lost slides and negatives.
    - Daryl Lang, PDN

  3. pmelcher says:
    April 14, 2009 at 11:46 am

    Daryl Lang of PDN,

    You are right. However, you did not mention anything about this major recent development. Also, it would be appreciated if you did not send volatile emails around. It does not make you, or your publication, look very professional.

  4. dearmasa says:
    April 17, 2009 at 7:02 am

    Daryl, no offense, but if “dozens” means more than 24 (which would be a mere “two” dozen), then I’ve clearly missed them! I did count five, though, including the one published on April 14, so I guess we should be grateful. Given that PDN attempts to cover so many aspects of the photo business world, we can hardly expect them to devote too much attention to these cases.

    Given that Paul not only wrote about it but called PDN and six photo membership groups, three of which Chris is a dues-paying member, to the carpet about not covering this story, *should* have generated additional coverage and not defensive replies. However, at least PDN did do a story, so thank you.

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