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« Photo-snobism | A rock in Jupiter »

Selfish self promotion

Supreme court justice nominee  Sonia Sotomayor,  it  was just revealed yesterday, was  one of three judges who handled the Chris Usher/ Corbis case we had mentioned here extensively . It should be noted that if she is appointed, which she probably will, photographers and photography will undoubtedly be mistreated if any case bubble up to the Supreme Court.

The New York Times broke the story with an extensive article which happens to quote one of my entries :

read all about here.

The best part is when the Corbis lawyer compares photography with nails:

“Why would photographers be immune from the laws of economics?” he said. “If I had a 20-year-old business selling nails, and you were interested in buying my nail business, would you not look at how it performed? Would you not look at the gross revenue over 20 years and at the net and what the competition is, in order to fix a price? Why would photographers think they’re immune from these things? It’s a commodity.”

Indeed, Corbis, photography is a commodity. You must be proud of that statement.  If so, why don’t you license all your images at $7 ?

This entry was posted on July 16, 2009 at 7:33 am and is filed under copyright, celebrity, photojournalism, editorial, news, 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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3 Responses to “Selfish self promotion”

  1. dearmasa says:
    July 16, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    What Chris and I are still reeling from is Mr. Fairhurst’s revelation during his interview for the article that he and Sotomayor go way back! I can assure you, that was not disclosed to us prior to our hearing! In fact, Paul, I thought your blog title today was in reference to Fairhurst’s shameless self-promotion of his relationship with Sotomayor LOL Why else would he reveal something that should have been disclosed before thehearing… Not three months later.

  2. pmelcher says:
    July 16, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    Indeed, you would have thought she would have to recuse herself, or at least make it known to your party.

  3. greenberg says:
    July 16, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    This office represented Mr. Usher.

    This article was the first indication we had that Judge Sotomayor and Corbis’ counsel had (according to Mr. Fairhurst himself) a working relationship. No disclosure was made to us by Judge Sotomayor and thus we had no opportunity to request that she at least consider recusing herself from hearing the case. Had we known of this relationship we would have sought another appeals panel.
    I am quoted correctly in the above referenced NY Times article and therefore must assume that Corbis’ counsel is also quoted accurately.

    Any doubt as to how photographs are viewed by Corbis is eliminated by the article. If an inept or incompetent agent or seller can’t make deals, the images are thus worthless. That’s the logic.

    By that logic newly discovered rare images of say The Beatles or JFK which by definition lack a licensing history, would have (according to Corbis) no value if lost before being offered for licensing. Indeed such images could not (using such logic) even be professionally appraised due to the lack of a revenue stream.

    I have lectured and written on many occasions on “photos as commodities”. I have cited other examples of stock agency attitudes but the views set forth by Mr. Fairhurst in the NY Times article are perhaps the clearest and require no interpretation by a reader.

    Remember to always consider the practices, policies, views and litigation history of any company prior to deciding whether you want to do business with them. If the corporate policy is “if we can’t sell/license the image it ain’t worth squat” - think twice.

    — Edward C. Greenberg

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