GoPro has reason to celebrate, as shares of the company’s stock rose 1.23% and revenue for their second fiscal quarter increased by 72%. The company is looking to build upon this momentum with ambitious new initiatives: GoPro has a mobile video editing app in the pipeline, and it's also launching a content licensing portal that helps GoPro users monetize the content they create.
If you're ever asked for permission to use a photo, be sure you know the scope of what you're agreeing to before saying yes. Photographer Nikki MayDay Guardascione tells us that she got quite a surprise yesterday when a seemingly-simple photo request from Miller Lite turned out to be for much more usage than she originally thought.
A white police officer in South Carolina is facing murder charges after shooting an unarmed black man in the back and killing him as he ran away. A bystander named Feidin Santana witnessed the whole incident on April 4th and managed to capture cell phone footage, which then became widely seen around the world and sparked fresh new outrage about police brutality.
Now, nearly two weeks after the shooting, the video is at the center of a new discussion: news outlets are being asked for a $10,000 fee if they wish to share the video.
Last week SpaceX posted its photos to Flickr and released them to the public domain. Unfortunately for the company, Flickr didn't have any public domain designation they could use, so even though SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the photos were public domain, the images were shared under a Creative Commons license that required attribution.
That has now changed. Flickr announced yesterday that it has created two new options for members in the copyright dropdown panel: public domain and CC0, which allows users to release content to the public domain.
NASA is a government agency, so the photographs it creates are released to the public domain and can be used by anyone for any purpose. Now that private companies such as SpaceX are getting involved in space exploration and collaborating with NASA, the copyright of mission photos becomes a little more murky.
All that cleared up in a big way this past weekend: SpaceX is following NASA's lead and will now be releasing photos to the public domain.
Flickr announced this morning the addition of a new licensing program to their lineup. Describing the program as a way for photographers to “partner with photo agencies, editors, bloggers and other creative minds who are seeking original content,” Flickr seems to be taking strike at 500px and others to get their hand in on the licensing game.
A couple of days ago, we received an email from a concerned concert photographer who had apparently earned the right to photograph an upcoming Motely Crüe concert.
The photographer, who preferred not to identify him or herself, shared with us what they claimed to be the Red White & Crüe Inc. photography licensing agreement, bringing our attention to wording that seems to indicate photographers can't even license their own images without the company's express consent.
It’s true. Both Neil Leifer and Walter Iooss worked for free.
In an attempt to potentially flip the imaging licensing market on its head, Pixels.com has launched a new platform that puts the photographers in control for a change. By allowing image creators to manage every aspect of the process -- from prices, to what the license entails -- they're hoping to completely change who holds the power in the image licensing marketplace.
When 500px announced that it was introducing its own photo licensing feature, 500px Prime, the company received a lot of backlash from photographers who thought a 30% cut was far too little.
Well, it looks like 500px was listening. Because Prime went live yesterday with a significantly more favorable payment breakdown.
Update: It looks like it's already been fixed. Kudos to Getty for the quick response.
Getty's embed tool has been live for less than 24 hours and ALREADY somebody has figured out how it can be taken advantage of. It turns out that all it takes is some extremely simple code to remove attribution entirely.
So Getty Images has made some waves with the announcement of its embedding "feature" to allow non-commercial use of their images without a watermark. This move is bound to kick off some interesting discussions on the state of photography in a digital sharing age.
Last night, Getty Images made a huge announcement that could forever change the way high quality images are shared on the Internet. Like Flickr before it, Getty is introducing an embed feature, essentially creating an "easy, legal, and free" way for people to share the majority of the agency's images in a non-commercial context.
Earlier today, 500px announced that it would be getting into the licensing game with a new commercial licensing site dubbed 500px Prime.
In a move that will be popular with many bloggers and, perhaps, less popular with many photographers, Google …
Many of you are familiar with the website PhotoStealers, which acts as "a wall of shame... dedicated to photographers that feel that it's okay to steal others work and post it as their own." Photo theft is expertly weeded out and exposed by the site's creator, who has taken on some big names including Jasmine Star and Doug Gordon.
The most recent PhotoStealers post, however, might reach even more epic proportions than the Star/Gordon shame-fest. It involves one Christopher Jones of CJ Photography and, before long, might involve a defamation lawsuit as well.
There's a brand new service in town that's looking to help out those photographers who choose to share their images for free with the online community. Powered by Creative Commons, the new website Dotspin uses a hashtag and voting system to determine a photo's quality and give the photographer a chance to earn credits towards rewards such as restaurant gift cards.
A new controversy is brewing in the world of stock photography. Just last month, it came to light that Getty had agreed to license 5000 of its stock photos to Google while paying the creators of the images a meager one-time fee of $12. Now, one of Getty's most successful stock photographers is claiming that his account is being terminated in the aftermath of the first hoopla.
Drive across the west end of the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and you're bound to see the iconic Portland, Oregon sign, commonly known as the "White Stag sign." It's an oft-photographed sign that was named a historic landmark back in 1977.
If you were planning on featuring it in a photo shoot, however, you'll now want to bring your checkbook in addition to your camera -- the city of Portland is now charging fees for anyone who would like to use images of the sign commercially.
Back in early December, Google announced that the company would be adding 5,000 new stock images of "nature, weather, animals, sports, food, education, technology, music and 8 other categories" for free use in Docs, Sheets and Slides.
At the time nobody knew how Google got these images, who took them, or what kind of license they came with. The mystery continued on unsolved until a week ago when an iStocker discovered one of his own images in the search results. As it turns out, the use of these photos is the result of a little known licensing deal between Google and Getty Images.
Creative Commons licensing is becoming a common option on major photo and video sharing services -- Flickr and YouTube, for example -- but it's not something that 500px offered -- until now. The fast-growing Flickr rival is now onboard with flexible copyright agreements, rolling out Creative Commons licensing options for all of its users yesterday.
In an interview we published this past weekend, popular photo blogger …
Apple is constantly engaged in its fair share of courtroom battles, but its latest one hits a little closer to home for photographers. Swiss photographer Sabine Liewald has filed a lawsuit against Apple for using her "Eye Closeup" photograph to promote the 15-inch MacBook Pro's Retina Display.
Did you know that in California, “rights of publicity” are transfered to a celebrity’s heirs after the celebrity dies? …
Flickr's Creative Commons licensing options allows its users to grant licenses that allow creators to make use of the photographs under a set of terms (e.g. attribution, non-commercial). Most photo sharing services have yet to bake Creative Commons licenses into their websites, but starting today, Instagram users can now release their photos under CC -- albeit through a third-party solution.
It's called I Am CC, and is a project started by LocalWiki founder Philip Neustrom that aims to "make the world a better, more creative place."
Texas wedding photographer Allen Ayres was recently contacted by an advertising agency that wanted to use one of his wedding photographs for one of its pharmaceutical clients. Ayres had in mind to ask for $1,000, but wisely decided to ask for advice over at Digital Wedding Forum.
Polaroid the company was named after the inexpensive polarizing film developed by founder …
The UK government issued an updated copyright policy statement today that's intended to modernize copyright law in a digital era. But here's where those traditionally protected under copyright -- authors, poets, artists, photographers and so forth -- begin to cringe: sweeping definitions of "orphan works" and Extended Collective Licensing could allow companies to buy chunks of content without compensating original authors.
Someone finds your work on Flickr. They contact Getty Images to buy it. Getty Images contacts you for permission to sell it to their buyer. Do you do it?
So, from time to time, I receive requests to use my images for various purposes — like on a blog or a pamphlet or a calendar or the side of a zeppelin or for a urinal cake. Typically, if they are nice and they’re not going to be making a load of cash off where they’d like to use my image then I’ll let them use it as long as they give me credit. I’m especially generous with environmental interests and non-profits and ice cream manufacturers offering vouchers for all-you-can-eat tours.
But then there are the chumps (and chumpettes) who will be making a substantial amount of money off of the use of my image and I send them packing unless they pony up a fair amount of money. The latest version of this repetitive saga really got caught all up in my craw and so I felt the need to write a bit about it.