Hi Mr. Munger-
My name is Katherine Gill and I work at the Daily News. It was brought to my attention that you posted a photo of Bill Roth's on your blog. We have a copyright fee of $100 to post photos on a website. Please contact me at kgill@adn.com if you would like to proceed with paying the fee, or please remove the photo from your website.
Thank you,
Katherine Gill
Hi, Ms. Gill
Why do I have to remove the photo or pay the fee? I've used many photos from your paper before. This is the first time this has come up.
Was there something different about this particular image and its use, or are you going to go back through my blog posts, asking me to remove any images for which you might charge a similar fee?
I've commented here and elsewhere about your photo policy or whatever you call it in-shop, but this is the first time someone from your organization has contacted me by any means.
Until you or somebody from your company answers here, the image stays.
Regards,
Phil Munger
Oh, yeah. Bill Roth is one incredible photographer. Anyone who wants to pay tribute to the art of Bill's photography at the ADN, feel free to comment.
Update - Wednesday 8:30 a.m: The last time this came up, IIRC, was when the ADN asked Theresa at My Fairbanks Life to do the same, when, as part of a story, she posted an image by Marc Lester. There is an interesting comment to her post on the incident by Steve Aufrecht.
Update - Thursday 6:30 a.m: The image of Mr. Joo has been removed here and at last Sunday's arts post.
7 comments:
It's called desperation Phil. Next they'll be asking for a fee for any mention of the newspaper's name. DZ
Phil, I think you're being a little pig-headed here. I'm pretty sure the law is on their side on this one, and as I said in the comments on Theresa's blog - the photographer makes money off her pictures. If you take that person's work to improve your blog, you owe that person their price for the picture. Now, if the picture itself is what you are discussing, that makes it grayer and you may need to show the readers the pic so they know what the debate is about.
DZ, I think you're being a bit disingenuous here. Your pics are all copyrighted and you sell them. Would you let the ADN simply copy them and put them on their site or on the front page for free?
After the discussion on Theresa's blog, I decided to post on my blog that people who wanted to use my pictures should ask first and then give credit.
Phil, you give credit and I haven't fussed about your not asking first because a) you aren't making any money off this stuff b) you send people to my site, and c) you've been very good to me and my site. In fact, I give you (Phil) blanket right to use photos from my site.
But I don't think it unreasonable for the ADN to protect their property. Though I'd like to know how much of that $100 fee goes to the ADN and how much goes to the photographer.
Now, if you want to get into a discussion about copyright, trademarks, and patents in general, that's another story. There's lots to attack - drug patents preventing dying patients from access to the drugs. Multinationals copyrighting seeds and natural products that people have used for centuries like neem in India. BP and Conoco-Philips trying to trademark the name Denali. And all the car companies stealing Native American names - Cherokee, Pontiac, etc.
Whether anyone should have copyrights - musicians, artists, writers - is also up for discussion. But there are good reasons to say yes they should, as well as reasons to no under certain conditions.
So, you're instincts about the general problems with copyrights are good, but your approach is going in the wrong direction for me.
The ADN is an easy target. Things in the newspaper world are changing radically. They have a lot of sunk costs and as things morph to the web they are struggling. If they fold next year, we're all going to be the poorer for it.
I'm sure letting you use their photos is not a big deal, except that it sets a precedent that I expect others - with a profit motive - would exploit.
Buy a camera Phil. Or highlight your posts with original music - that anyone can cut and paste onto their own sites.
they have a right to do this. but it's a question of whether they should, given the public interest in the info. there's some sort of a solution here. they could make some photos available for use under a creative commons license, and keep others off-limits. if i was going to pay them the $100 [and it probably wouldn't happen] i'd want to make sure the money was going into something worthwhile, not just ADN's general operating fund.
i learned that when the anchorage times went out of business in 1992, and ADN inherited all of their equipment, files, etc. that all of the times' photo archive was accidentally thrown away. just an unfortunate accident, in the confusion. but maybe part of the use fees they're trying to collect should go toward maintaining an archive to assure that nothing like that ever happens again. there's a lot of questions in my mind about how digital files will be archived, and i wonder if anyone is working on it?
I'm just wondering why you think you shouldn't pay for using someone else's work.
1) I already decided to remove the image - both from the earlier post and from this one, of Mr. Joo by Mr. Roth. I'm rather busy today, though, to do it in a way that doesn't just put a big hole in the Arts Sunday article.
2) The DZ comment is by somebody trying to pass him or herself off as Dennis Zaki, but Zaki didn't post it.
3) I don't make money off this blog, and posting Mr. Roth's excellent art in 15kb snips can't possibly hurt him in the context in which I've used it, and could possibly - when connected with Don Decker's excellent article about Joo's exhibit, enhance the ADN's and Roth's esteem, and bring in more paying customers to the museum.
4) And I found it strange that Ms. Gill made the request in the comment section of a blog post, rather than through e-mail - the ADN has all my e-mail addresses - or, Like Theresa, in a phone call.
I'm not saying that Gill's method was rude or unprofessional, just different.
5) clark raises an interesting point. And - who gets the $100.00 if I pay the ADN. Does Bill get any of the $, or does it go into some general fund from image purchases.
6) I'm not sure whether or not to remove Bill's 2004 image of me. I've located it several places on the web, and I'm about 99.9% sure the ADN has never contacted any of those places. They aren't just links to the ADN article for which the image was taken.
Oh, yeah, I forgot - Thanks, Steve, and thanks, Dennis. I wish I had half the eye for photography either of you, or Bill has. Or clark.
There was no phone call involved when the editor of the ADN contacted me. Just e-mail.
PS Congrats on your Rasmusson Award.
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