Photographers have a thing about copyright. Perhaps you’ve noticed?
Every other day someone on a mailing list or web forum is flying off the handle because he’s (it’s always a “he”) discovered an unauthorized use of one of his images. Which is OK. You’re entitled to get upset when someone takes your work without compensation. I know one photographer who had to shut down his equestrian photography business because his intended customers were just grabbing the proof images from his web site, sometimes even printing them out for display, despite the low resolution and subsequent low quality of the prints.
But here’s the irony: At almost every photography workshop with which I’ve been involved at least one of the other presenters has committed a flagrant copyright violation. Either at the end or beginning of their presentation they run a slide show of their best images… accompanied by music — Sting, Beatles, Celine Dion, whatever*. These events aren’t for charity. The audiences are paying to attend and the speakers are compensated for their presence. Using someone’s music to accompany a slide show under these circumstances is a violation of copyright unless you’ve paid the appropriate licensing fee.
It doesn’t matter if they’re giving the musical artists credit — if Sting ended his concert with a slide show that included one of these photographers’ photos, do you think they’d want to be paid for it? Of course.
It makes no difference that Sting is a multi-millionaire who would never even notice the small licensing fee needed to play his song once for an audience of 150 people. If you use his or anyone else’s music without paying you’re no better than the web thieves who ended my friend’s photo business at horse shows. And you have no right to complain about anyone scraping your shots from your web site if you’re stealing someone else’s media for your own use.
Which brings me to the subject of today’s blog post, this book: “Getting Permission” by Richard Stim (Nolo Press, ISBN 978-1-4133-0518-0)
This book tells you everything you could want to know about licensing music to go with your slide show. Or using photos on your web site. Or — and this is what will interest most of you — what to do to license your work to others. Also covered are topics like licensing artwork, trademarks, art and merchandise licenses and much more. Sections on how to research copyright ownership and the real ins and outs of Fair Use and Public Domain (not the urban legends you’ve read on the web). If what you need to know isn’t covered in this book, you really need to talk to an IP lawyer in person; it’s that thorough.
As a bonus, the book includes a CD-ROM with dozens of useful legal forms and documents like model releases, assignment and work for hire agreements and much, much more.
Highly recommended. Buy it from Powell’s for $34.99. It’s worth twice the price.
ADDENDUM:
I just received an email from Rich Stim, the author of this book, thanking me for this blog post. He has a blog at dearrichblog.com, where he answers questions about patent, trademark and copyright issues. I had a look and it’s as good as I would have expected (which is to say, very good). Check it out.
* OK, not Celine Dion. All the photographers I know have better taste than that.