August 22, 2008 by pmelcher.

I am no friend of fair use.  “Fair Use is a USA law that provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor balancing test.  In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”

This law does not even require that someone get a permission from the author or, at least,  informed them of such usage. Guess common courtesy does not exist in US copyright laws. Obviously, “non- licensed” means free. Fortunately, most people do not abuse this law that is widely open to interpretation.
This law has been in existence for a long time and is to me, much more damaging then the potentially upcoming Orphan Work Bill. After all, in this case, one knows the copyright owner but is still allow to use his/her work for free and without having to be polite about it.
Created to help scholar use reference work without going bankrupt, it has become the principle doorway to common copyright infringement.
Why not offer a small $1 licensing fee for those poor scholars that cannot afford paying full price. Or a special “education” fee, like Apple does with its computers. ( mmm…you have to see how much the US University charge per year/per student . Wonder what they do with that money instead of paying artists).
The idea is that every work used should be compensated, regardless of the amount. There has been work done thus compensation should be applied.
However that is not the worst. A famous blog situated on one of these new community based portal ( no, not DigitalRailroad) has been using an insane amount of images. At first, it seemed that since it is a professional blog, created with the obvious intend to drive traffic to its Collection, it would be properly licensing these images.
Imagine my shock ( and awe) when I heard that it does not. It recently used an image from a very well known photo agency that it ripped from another online legitimate publication and used it, along others, on its blog. No permission and no money exchange.
When asked why they would use images without licensing them when they are in image licensing business?  they  responded, “I can’t answer that question.”
They did pull the image down, only to be replaced by another from another agency. Probably without permission. What compels a company that is itself in the image licensing business to not pay for images that they clearly use for promotional usage?  Especially after screaming loud and clear they would be spending over $1 million in marketing this year. Is there no % in that budget to pay for licensing other people images ?

It would be nice, and honest, for that company, to clearly define their policy on the usage of photograph and stop claiming their are the defenders of the photographers when they boldly rip images from other sites like cheap second hand robbers.

Posted in copyright, technology, license, No sense, editorial, transaction, law | Print | 3 Comments »

May 15, 2008 by pmelcher.

Curators, not photographers, are the stars of the first New York Photo Festival. The poster says it all, four names, big black bold letters, it’s a curator festival, photographers only welcomed to drop by and admire. Situated all around the creators’ neighborhood (Brooklyn), Powerhouse and VII, the festival of “very important images” is a tribute to beautiful pictures on a wall. A kind of mix between fine art photography ( whatever that is ) and intellectually profound photojournalism. There is a lot of thought behind each image and sometimes you feel there is more thought than talent.

This type of photography, and the world around it, is in direct competition with painter or sculpture galleries that love to explain minimalism with grandiloquent words. It’s more about being seen than seeing. Sometimes I wonder what it has to do with photography besides the fact that it was taken with a camera. The motto here is, the more you wonder at what you are looking at, the more the picture is a success.

There is also a lot of ego in this festival. So much so, that one should bring a knife to cut through those excessive layers of self righteousness.  It is as if photography by itself is not enough and one needs to become something, someone in order to make the images more interesting.  Those poor images dangling on a wall seem lonely when no one is there to explain their “deep” significance. They are even lonelier after someone does. There is also a lot of vanity, this sort of social importance of who you know and who knows you  that fill these rooms. A sort of gentrification of  the photography world where you can feel pushed out if you are not in the know of who is hot and who is not.

Everyone and anyone wants to be included in everything while reserving the right to refuse any invitation. The group that becomes the most famously exclusive becomes the most popular. The NY Photo festival feels a bit like that. Even Darryl Lang has a hard time showing images on his daily video feeds. This festival is all about people who organized it, not really about photography.

If an image puzzles you as to why it was selected, don’t ask. You will be looked upon as a complete idiot and forever give up your chance of being part of those “in the know”. Sometimes you wonder if the photographers even know why they have been selected.

However, with all this said, it is a great idea to have launched this festival. Hopefully, it will mature to be wider instead of so eclectic. It will encompass other neighborhoods and different photography , and not try to transform photography into a religion with self-elected priests. It will maybe include more “reachable” images, so that those who are not in this business can enjoy it too. I do not know if it is an reverse effect of Flickr and other Photobucket that some seem to try to take photography out of the masses hands and create exclusive, by membership-only, temples. This festival sure feels this way to us, even if some amateur photography is being shown. It has this “us versus them” scent to it, as if to say : the crowd doesn’t decide, we decide.

There is much to see and probably more to hear and I do look forward to seeing more . To me, the more photography is celebrated, the better, even if I do not always agree with the way it is done. As a famous saying says, “taste and color are two things you should never argue about”. Kudos to the organizers.

Posted in lens, copyright, editorial | Print | No Comments »

May 9, 2008 by pmelcher.

First, I have to admit I have always been a big fan of everything that comes out of the Ideeplex in Toronto. These guys have the best image tracking system I have ever seen, PixId, already used by the top photo agencies in the world to save countless hours in their billing process. They have a visual search that is incomparable and might just be the secret weapon of the Alamy armada. They also have a color search that is the most proficient out there . You can see and play with all of them in their lab section. These guys are doing for photography what Einstein did for physics, making it progress by leaps and bounds. If you are not using one of Idee’s services these days, you  have a big problem.

So when Idee announced the beta version of their image search earlier this week, called TinEye, I could not wait to play with it. Premise is simple: Take an image that you either upload or find on a website and ask Tineye to  seek any place it is published. That would seem simple enough, but Tineye will also find that image, wether its been cropped, resized, re colored, twisted, bended, you name it. Even with major (and we are talking major) alteration, Tineye will find it. Alterations that would make a human eye miss it. Impressive. very impressive.

That image:

brought up this image, among many others:

Because it is still in Beta, the results are not impressive in numbers. They have only indexed half a billion images and are in the process of indexing the rest. Hey, Google was not built in one day either. If you live near Toronto, you probably can see the smoke coming out of the Ideeplex. It’s those server crunching data under the watchful eyes of master genius CTO Paul Bloore. Or could it be from CEO Leila Boujnane head, fuming with impatience because it is not finished yet ?

I played with many different types of images, using the cool Firefox plug in that lets you perform a search without leaving the site you are visiting.Hard to stop and I know I will continue to use it intensively.

So what it is good for ? Well, for one, speaking of Orphan Work, this image search engine that could will find all usage of an image, including, very certainly, the owner of the image.  It is going to much, much harder to claim that an image is orphan with this guy. But it can do much more. Think of all those micro and midstock  photographers who would love to see where their images have been used. Same with those CC happy Flickr members. Pro photographers will be able to keep a watchful eye over their agencies, as well as agencies can keep a watchful eye for unauthorized usage (Picscout, beware ).

There are many other potential for this free image search which suddenly puts google image into the medieval ages. And it will be a pleasure to watch and grow and mature. There is no doubt this will be one of the biggest success of the internet in recent years. Because people are fed up of searching for images with text. It just doesn’t make any sense. This is just the beginning of the end of keywording, the fall of the controlled vocabulary despotism.

Tineye returns exact matches, for the time being, and that is  maybe its most important shortcoming. It will return the same exact image and not similar. But knowing these guys, that will not last long, and the option to return images that look like the image you are using shouldn’t be that far.

If you have a chance, jump on this as soon as you can. They are taking suggestions and I am sure would love to hear your. It is time to make history . ( oh no, I sound like Obama now…)

Either way, these guys have a reputation: If it is not perfect, its not finished. So, do not expect them to open Tineye to the public before every little crumb of image is properly indexed.

Posted in idee, Canada, technology, copyright, license, editorial, web 2.0, Search, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

April 24, 2008 by pmelcher.

Image details: Pope Benedict XVI Celebrates Mass At Yankee Stadium served by picapp.com

It is a blessing these days to see a company that grows by listening to its criticism. Ad supported licensing company Picapp has recently revamped its site and has made some good improvements.  First and foremost, you can decide if you want or not that little pop up figure they call picaboo. You can also choose the size of the image you want to post and what type of an animation.

Thus after selecting your image, you can select between a goofy interface to a more serious one. What the people needed.

A quick down and dirty Alexa ranking shows Picapp  ahead of competitor Gumgum in traffic. No big surprise as they started with a big bang using the Getty  trampoline.

The real question is why did neither of these companies have open their service to individuals.

Sure, it is nice to have access to images from pros, but what about the huge pool of amateurs. This licensing model would much better serve the Flickr community than anyone else. After all, it would be a great replacement to the useless Creative Common scheme. ” here, use my picture for free, in exchange for which I get a cut on ads”. Fair enough, no ?

But neither Flickr, Photobucket, Smugmug and other mass photo storage platform will allow their content to be duplicate on either the Picapp or Gumgum server. The technology has to come to them. And that is the biggest shortcoming of both companies. Because their technology is neither proprietary neither that hard to create.

The second short coming is that neither offer the publisher any income for posting these images. Even the slightest cut would make either company immediately attractive. Imagine, get paid to post images !! Someone is bound to do it.

I can foresee very soon many  agencies offering the same type of licensing model from within their own site, bypassing the “Picgum” middle man.It would not be a problem for Flickr to add that option too. So it leaves both companies in breathless race to create enough critical mass of content to become indispensable. One, Picapp, has concentrate on overall volume, while the other, GumGum, seems to concentrate on just celebrity oriented content.

Let’s see what the future brings them. Either way, a very interesting race to watch.

Photo Licensing by GumGum | © PacificCoastNews

Posted in celebrity, copyright, alexa, technology, gumgum, license, keyword, filter, editorial, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, getty | Print | No Comments »

April 22, 2008 by pmelcher.

I would like to take a break and ask those of you who have, or will, threatened me with a lawsuit to please stop. In slightly more than a year since I have started writing this blog about the photo industry solely for my pleasure, I am now to the third lawsuit threat.

It is getting annoying. This is a blog, not a news outlet. I do not have the time to verify my facts and very often, I just go with my guts. I might be wrong, In which case a simple, polite email will do the trick. I have no problem admitting that I am wrong and making a correction. I have done it in the past and will do it again. Piece of cake.

This just shows the state of our industry where some companies feel that suing a blog like mine will change the perception that the world has of them. I have news for you : the world doesn’t care. They don’t even know we exist. When people open a magazine, they certainly enjoy the pictures they see, but they really, really do not care where they came from or how they made it in the magazine.  They hardly know what a photo editor does and even less what a photo agency is.

And they do not care. So all these claims that have made irreparable damages to your business are just stones in the wind. If you have great pictures to sell, they will buy them, regardless if I said you are a schmuck or not.

Furthermore, 90 % of the time, I just write about what everyone is talking about. It is no secret. And when people ask me not to repeat something, you know what ? I don’t.

So keep you hard earned money in your pockets instead of hiring an expensive New York lawyer who will have a hard time going after the first amendment of the United States  constitution. What happened to the ancient Greek  arts of dialogue, debate and healthy  conversations ? Why hire someone else to do your speaking on your behalf ?

If you have a problem with something I wrote, you have three options :

- stop reading my blog, nobody forces you to.

- send me an email  telling me where I have been wrong and if it is proven right, I will promptly make the correction.

- post a commentary. I have, to this date, never censored a comment, how nasty it might be.

But please remember that this is my opinion and nothing else. It is intended to trigger a reaction and a healthy debate. It is not the absolute truth but just my personal take on it. And for the sake of everyone else who do enjoy reading what I write (the majority, fortunately), please keep your lawyers handy for copyright infringements and other real threats to your business. Suing me and forcing  me to shut down my blog will NOT make your business profitable. And that is the truth.

Posted in magazine, copyright, editorial, law, news | Print | No Comments »

April 14, 2008 by pmelcher.

 Ever since I wrote the piece “orphan work is good for you”, I have been slammed with emails which all pretty much revolved around the same issue : Orphan work bill is a open door for Copyright Infringement and the legalization of free usage.

First and foremost, I keep on refering my readers to a very concise and readable link created by the Copyright Office . In no way do they propose or would facilitate free usage. It is not their intend. It is also quite admirable that they have, and will continue to hold hearings  to listen to all and everyones concerns.

But the most important, to me, is to see that Canada has had a Orphan Work bill in effect since 2005. Quite effective, it requires the potential user of an Orphan image, after proving its good faith in researching the copyright owner,  to be granted a license by the Copyright office. It has happened  only 19 since  then. Granted, Canada is not as big as the United States, but 19 is almost not worth a second look.

Furthermore, the Canadian law leaves 5 years after the license has been granted for the owner to retrieve his/her license. It is still early to see if this provision has ever been used by anyone.

The copyright office, and any all serious image licensor know very well that technology can be a very serious ally in copyright protection. Regardless of any petition and whining, the bill WILL pass.

As said before, It will be a great  incentive for everyone to respect metadata more seriously  and for the photo industry to finally grow up.

Posted in idee, Canada, focus, technology, copyright, license, web 2.0, keyword, IPTC, law | Print | No Comments »

April 2, 2008 by pmelcher.

A new company emerged from unknown depth a few days ago, proposing free “automated” tagging, or keywording. Named Tagcow, the company does not explain how the tagging is done.

Curious, I decided to give it a spin with a couple of images including this image:

After two days, the image was finally tagged with two words: “Pool” , “Man”. I guess that is what you get for free. Furthermore, when I downloaded the image, I could not find the keywords anymore…There is nothing automated about this service. It is currently impossible for a computer to recognize  the content of an image. The most advanced systems I have seen have a 10% success rate, and then again with very contrasted and simple pictures. Tagcow uses a little known service offered by Amazon call the Mechanical Turk. With this service, anyone can put a long, painful task and offer to pay for human beings to fulfill them

“Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it”. At 0.01 cent a picture, one can get images keyworded for cheap. However, the quality is not guaranteed.

Thus it is the power of the masses used here, making more obvious why they picked a cow for their name. Not the brightest animal in the land

Posted in No sense, Search, copyright, IPTC, keyword, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, filter | Print | 2 Comments »

March 31, 2008 by pmelcher.

While photographers trade organization are wasting their time fighting issues like the Oprhan Work bill in order the save whatever they have left, and while photo agencies association seem violently silent, the world of editorial continue its downfall.

According to Radaronline, Newsweek magazine got rid of 111 staffers last week ( didn’t even know they had that many)  and the newspapers of America had the worst ad revenue in its 50 years history, according to E&P.Worst than the 2001 slump. While analysts seem to confuse Getty going private with Getty shutting down, it is quite obvious that the tide is retreating before the big hit.

As previously written here, the editorial world will loose its dailies and weeklies in favor of the internet. It is not a question of if, but when. Monthlies will continue to thrive as long as they keep away from time sensitive news. The old ways will not continue.

While this continues, photographers and agencies will continue to bear the heaviest load as they will be asked to support the biggest part of theit cost saving initiative. A lot of companies will sink with the ships they will be trying to save. Those who will survive are those who are, today, turning to the new market. Companies, like Getty, that have understood that the future is on the Internet and create for themselves opportunities to be competitive.

Istockphoto, and other micro/midstock agencies are a good example of internet savvy photo agencies. Lean, mean, fast, cost effective companies that have learned to both cut their costs and leverage technology to its fullest. They can reach wide and far accross the world and up and down the client ladder. Others have jumped into new licensing models like Gumgum which  allows them to operate like a microstock on but a RM model.

The issue will be the relenvency of content. Currently, the internet is replicating the print editorial world. Some are adding video or multimedia, but it is still very linear. But that will change too as “born in the internet” art directors will re -invent  the web page and how we consume our news. Photographers will and agencies will have to reinvent their offering to match it.

Getty, by going private, will certainly take advantage of this new situation. They have already by acuiring Istockphoto. The celebrity photo agencies have also initiated the switch by producing videos and embrassing new licensing models. Others will probablly decide that book publishing, exhibits, grants are a better way to go and try to carve a controlled market. But, with schools already using Wikipedia and other National Geographic sites as references, how long will this market survive?

More technology based solutions are peeking out of the horizon that can help this industry  make a succesful transition. It is, a little, heartbreaking to see how slowly they are being ignored by the guardians of the old temple who beleive that saving what they have is better than growing in new markets.

Posted in copyright, license, Midstock, celebrity, magazine, Newsweek, gumgum, Zymmetrical, multimedia, TIME, editorial, news, getty, transaction, CEPIC, photojournalism, msnbc.com, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

March 24, 2008 by pmelcher.

Apparently Picapp is having some hiccups. As per many posts in their forum, Picapp has been supplying non authorized images to bloggers worldwide for free.

Apparently Getty  was supposed to only put their wholly owned images via the Picapp service. That is images either produced by staff photographers or bought outright. But by some API fluck ( that is the official version, at least) images from commissioned photographers also appeared.

Apparently, the issue is currently being solved but if I were a Getty contributor, I would check if my images are made available. There filtering system does not seem to be very efficient. The most amusing part of all this?  Picapp is run by Picscout, an anti copyright infringement service. I guess you can’t trust anyone these day…

Posted in copyright, technology, license, filter, wire service, getty | Print | 1 Comment »

March 19, 2008 by pmelcher.

There are times when the world of photography just stops. To a standstill. Today is such a time. Legendary man and photographer Philip Jones Griffiths , passed away after 72 years of an amazing life.

There are no words that could truthfully pay enough tribute to such a photography giant . There are, thankfully, a lot of his images.

As Henri Cartier-Bresson to write of Philip: “not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths.”

In memory, now and forever, please visit, see, understand, appreciate his images :   Portfolio

and read more about Griffith in the wonderful Magnum tribute by Stuart Franklin

Posted in copyright, Magnum, newspaper, photojournalism, editorial, news | Print | No Comments »