The folks over at Photo Business News & Forum are reporting on a great new scam by the publishers of a book called “Stocked Up: 1,000 Royalty Free Photographs.” Basically it’s a book of random stock pictures including a DVD of all the images in digital format for royalty free use. The problem is, buying out the copyrights to 1,000 decent photographs might be a tad on the expensive side. So how do you get the rights to all those pics for zero dollars? Rip off students!
“Please note: Contributors maintain all rights to, and ownership of, all images submitted. Contributors are granting RotoVision the right to publish their images in the book and on the DVD to be used by readers in any manner they choose.”
Here’s how the scam works in a nutshell. Photo students are desperate to get noticed, right? And who doesn’t love being able to say, “why yes, I am a published photographer…” too, eh? So the editors put out a call to students that if they’ll just sign the rights of their five best photographs over to the editors, they can guarantee they’ll be “published.” Of course by doing so they now forfeit all the rights to their images. Pretty clever. Check out the full article for all the gory details.
Back Home
3 Comments at "Stealing Photos for Fun and Profit"
Better read the rights and understand what you are signing. The success of this program signifies that perhaps these students need to learn more on rights management.
Actually, this isn’t the scariest threat because at least one has a chance to sign on or not. Check this out:
http://www.bizzia.com/articles/yes-i-can-use-your-picture/
Saw your comments on the site you linked Amy. Here’s the thing; you obviously DO NOT UNDERSTAND what the creative commons licenses the bloggers was referring to. If people post their pictures under a CC license that says “Yes you can use the picture if you attribute it properly”, then anyone can do so. You don’t have to ask permission, because the license IS the permission.
Posting under a CC license does NOT negate your copyright. It’s merely a way for people to post their pictures for certain uses by anyone who adheres to the rules contained in the CC license being used. The blogger was NOT using pictures where the photographer did not grant permission with the license, only pictures that DID grant permission.
Educate yourself: http://creativecommons.org/
Comment Now!