Issues of copyright are key to photographers, copyrights of your images are your lifeblood when your a professional photographer. So why is it that more and more often companies that hire out photographers are trying to take more and more of those rights. Frommers seems to have rubbed some photographers the wrong way recently and it’s becoming public thanks to the internet.
Bob Krist published a story recently of how Frommers is really trying to encroach on the rights of a photographer with their stock photography terms. Frommers contacted Bob to license some of his work they wanted to not only license his work for a specific book but also have a perpetual license to re-use it whenever they see fit and to license it to anyone they want without the photographer knowing. I didn’t have any way to verify the terms of Bob’s assertions with regards to licensing his photos for use in their books so I can’t verify this completely so please take this with a grain of salt.
However Bob did make another statement about Frommers that I can verify which lends credibility to his whole article. Frommers is running a photo contest trying to get you to submit your photos for the contest but once you do they have given themselves full rights to use your photographs whenever and where ever they please. It’s quite a gig they have going, they offer a few photographers a prize but the real prize for them is the thousands of photos that readers submit, they can now use in all their publications free of charge.
Partial Frommers Photography contest Official Rules
License: Participant retains ownership of the copyright in any submitted photographs. However, by entering photograph(s) in this Contest, participant grants Sponsor the irrevocable, perpetual right to edit, adapt, use and publish in any media now known or hereafter discovered any or all of the photographs without compensation to the participant, his or her successors or assigns, or any other entity. ENTERING A SUBMISSION IN THIS CONTEST CONSTITUTES PARTICIPANT’S IRREVOCABLE ASSIGNMENT, CONVEYANCE, AND TRANSFERENCE TO SPONSOR OF THE FOREGOING RIGHTS. Photograph(s) shall be given attribution credit based on the name supplied with submission. The winner shall work with Sponsor to change the file in any way deemed necessary for publication of the photograph(s). The participants shall supply, upon request, original, unmodified digital files.
It just goes to show you that even good intentions like those in the content can have alterior motives, in this case it seems pretty obvious that Frommers’ intentions are get lots of free photographs for their books.
What does this mean for photographers that shoot this kind of work? Life may become a little harder when your trying to work in the publishing world on a per image basis. With more and more companies trying to get something for nothing and getting more for less, the photographer seems to be getting squeezed harder then ever. What should a photographer do in a situation like this, let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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