Final Death Blow to Stock Photography and Video

[Warren Faidley]

For those of you who are still involved in stock photography and video, you might find the article I have pasted below an interesting read. I believe it is truly the last stand for photographers and the stock industry. It does not matter if you are a lone photographer trying to sell images to help pay for chasing, or if you are signed with a stock agency. The problem is shared by all.

As many of you know, I've been involved in the stock photography side of storm chasing going back to the late 1980's when I left my photojournalism job to pursue weather photography as a full-time occupation. It's been interesting and sad to see the industry change -- for the worse. The biggest heartbreak has been watching so many storm photographers and their images getting ripped off by the growing number of Internet sites that use images and footage for promotion and money making scams with no benefit or payment to the photographer -- while circumventing copyright laws. Many photographers and videographers are completely unaware of these abuses.

Here is a recent email shared by Getty Images:

"As you may know, in April of this year, Getty Images filed a competition law complaint against Google in the European Union in a bid to help stop its anti-competitive scraping of imagery created by contributors like yourself.

Since replacing thumbnails with high res image files in 2013, Google Images has gone from being the world’s largest image search engine to the world’s largest publisher and distributor of free imagery. However, the content Google is giving away is yours - and it’s not free.

The changes that Google made to image search in 2013 means that Google keeps significant traffic that would otherwise go to the source sites, as well as all of the user data that it can then use to target advertising. Data related to image viewing is clearly valuable, as evidenced by Google’s launch of shopping ads directly within its image search service in May. Meanwhile Google pays nothing for the high-quality content that it appropriates for its own benefit.

But there is more: Google does not itself host the large-format images, it instead uses the bandwidth of the source sites to host and serve those images. Google presents the image in a “frame” so that the user remains unaware it has viewed content on the content-owner’s website. Google also allows users to right-click, copy and save images, and does not include prominent copyright notices or photographer attribution, thus facilitating copyright infringement and turning users into “accidental pirates.”

In response to complaints, Google has suggested that photographers can simply opt-out of image search using the robots.txt protocol. Given Google’s dominant market share and the fact that Google is the main gateway to the internet, its proposed solution is no solution at all: photographers can either surrender to Google’s edict and accept Google’s presentation of images, or become invisible online.

We are working closely with policy makers and industry groups to not only prevent Google from profiting further from your work, but to give you back control over your work, opportunity to access revenue that is rightfully yours, and ultimately, to make sure that you're competing with Google on a level playing field."

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[Dan Robinson]

It's gotten overwhelmingly bad. Add to this is how dismissive giants like Google are to the plight of photographers and how much sway they have in lobbying against change.

An arguably bigger problem I see right now is the dark-ages state of US/international copyright law. The DMCA is easily circumvented by counter-notifications, because the thieves know photogs can't afford to file Federal claims for every instance. They're weasels using a system stacked in their favor. Only until rights owners have some real teeth to go after small-time infringers will things imrpove. We need affordable ways to take them to court, overseas users ineligible to file counterclaims and service providers required to cut off repeat infringers. I've written letters to the Copyright Office, but who knows if the voice of photogs will ever do any good.

Add to this how popular/adored the infringers are by the general public (after all, they're providing all sorts of free entertainment, which the freeloading masses love). There is also a baffling apathy about this in the photography community, which is personally frustrating. So few seem to want to do anything about it, almost resigning themselves to the fate.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Great think tank question.

I am guessing future copyright laws will not change in favor of creative interests. There are simply too many networks and methods for distribution now days, unlike 30 years ago when print was the only source and it was easy to control / enforce.

I seriously doubt Congress will do anything (do they actually even meet anymore?) to alter copyright laws -- given many of the large corporations in question (Facebook, Google, etc.) are firmly rooted in the current political system. It would not be too much of a stretch to see the day when all images and footage will be considered "public domain" and the only income would be from the first licensed sale.