Copyright, schmopyright

It’s a real shame when the people who should be advocating for photographers and photojournalism the most are instead leading it off the cliff.

You might have heard by now of a particular deputy picture editor at a UK paper who, in an email to a photographer whose work they’d illegally published, sought to defend their copyright violation this way:

“[Due to the] ever-shifting nature of news – in particular with the advent of online publishing – [...] it is not always possible to secure copyright clearance before pictures are published.

Our industry therefore adopts the stance that if a picture has no overwhelming artistic value and if there is no issue of exclusivity (ie it is already being published online or elsewhere) then no reasonable copyright owner will object to its being republished in exchange for a reasonable licence fee. The only alternative to such a stance is not to publish pictures at all unless they come from a commercial library, the available range of which will inevitably be inadequate.

“[...] In this instance, and in light of what you have told us, we have no reason to doubt that you are the copyright owner for this picture. However the blog from which it was taken gave no indication as to the copyright owner and no contact details. We therefore used it (in fact we inadvertently used it again for some four hours this morning) in the normal way, which is to say that we were always prepared to pay the industry standard rate.

“Clearly it is open to the copyright owner to adopt the position that we have “violated” their copyright. The legal position in cases of breach of copyright is generally that the publisher is required to pay double the industry rate to take account of any ‘flagrancy’ of the breach. Inevitably the outcome is that publishers tend not to use pictures from such copyright owners in future.”

We’re lucky enough to have some very experienced people driving picture desks in this country and perhaps Fleet Street is these days less so. Perhaps it’s the same old story, whereby paying peanuts tends to deliver you not much more than monkeys. I don’t know this particular fellow from a bar of soap so I can’t say. But if we are to judge him by his actions then the verdict isn’t good.

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Making a liar out of me

Trawling through some old pictures the other day I came across one from the World Economic Forum protests, twelve years ago in Victoria, and one with a back story worth telling.

In the shadow of big anti-globalisation protests in Seattle weeks prior, Australian organisers were expecting much of the same here. Back in those days I was in the army, looking for a route into professional photography, and I was shooting everything that moved. So I took a few days’ leave and travelled to Melbourne.

Dozens of  ”violent incidents” at the hands of police were reported with breathless gusto, and outrage flowed from all sides during those three days. But the reality with these things is that you never quite know the truth in its entirety unless you’re standing there yourself. For what happened on the evening of Tuesday 12 September I had a front row seat and it still rates as the most vile police action I’ve seen in Australia.

It ended with protestors alleging police brutality and with police claiming they were the victims. All hearsay without proof, so you might think my photographs could serve as a convenient arbiter in settling the matter.

Instead, this saga illustrates how easily photojournalism might be undermined by a dishonest photographer or editor, and how a picture, as merely a moment in time, might betray the moments either side of it. And it all drives home just how much rests on the integrity of the author. The picture might be telling the truth, just not the same truth it’s purported to be telling.

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A hollow grab at copyright

Here’s the contract Lady Gaga’s people would have you sign in order to shoot the first three songs at one of her concerts. This one would seem to cater specifically to online publishers, but the copyright grab in the last sentence of the last paragraph is universal these days.

“Photographer hereby acknowledges and agrees that all rights, title and interest (including copyright) in and to the Photograph(s) shall be owned by Lady Gaga and Photographer hereby transfers and assigns any such rights to Lady Gaga.”

In other words, full ownership of the work your employer paid you to do goes to her for ever more as a condition of getting through the gate.

Rights grabbing contracts are common in the music industry and they have caught on in sport too, where they have lead to some major disputes and media boycotts.

But while there would seem to be plenty to be outraged about here, there’s also the view that this contract is not worth the paper it’s written on.

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A photo department without photographers

For those in the print media the next redundancy round always seems just around the corner. Evaporating revenue sources and an inability to discover new ones has led to an ongoing attack on the other side of the ledger. And it’s made press photographers an endangered species.

Relentless cost cutting is not the most innovative or imaginative business strategy but you wouldn’t argue with it if you’ve seen the numbers. Something has got to give and the only debate is what.

Since payroll is the biggest slice of the pie, staff redundancies have become so common that most do their best not to retire without one.

Just last week a major shareholder at Fairfax called for another 5,000 heads there (blatantly ridiculous in quantity at least). In any event, staff reductions at newspapers and magazines will continue until they find their new equilibrium, and until then the powers that be have the recurring challenge of deciding who they can and can’t do without. Which brings me to my point.

Media writer at the Guardian, Roy Greenslade (whose own paper won’t be around in five years under current conditions) wrote last week of the latest cuts at another major London masthead. The Independent has relieved itself of the very last of its staff photographers, to rely solely on agencies and freelancers, and Professor Greenslade ponders whether anyone will actually notice:

“I’m also uncertain whether it’s possible to show that the move from staff to freelance contributors will result, or has resulted, in a diminution in quality.”

In decades passed such a masthead might employ “lensmen”, as the poms put it, by the dozen. Those were the golden years, a lifetime ago, when British newspapers made a lot of money and hired a lot of people. But when that money dried up the fat had to be found and it had to be trimmed. So in the modern era it’s been more like a handful; a core staff to compliment a growing reliance on agencies, supplemented by an expanding roster of freelancers.

The worst case scenario always assumed that while the core might get smaller, it would always remain. Alas, not at The Independent.

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Marketing the megapixels

Many of you would have worked out long ago that in the modern digital camera, megapixel counts are at least as much a marketing tactic as they are a technical credential. The higher they go, the more this is so.

That’s because at a certain point file size becomes more of a burden than a benefit. It brings with it upwards pressure on memory cards, hard drive capacity and computer speed in order to enable what are for the most part increasingly superfluous pixels. But still it’s considered the measure of a camera.

Since the beginning it’s been thought good practice to shoot and retain your originals at the highest possible file size, as insurance against unforeseen needs. This was particularly sensible in the days when those files were so much smaller and their publishing limitations much more easily reached.

But resolution has increased a hundred-fold since then and at some point somebody really had to press stop. Not that I’ve ever been able to do it — if it grew a hundred-fold again, I’d sure as houses just keep turning to Lacie and SanDisk before I’d touch that dial myself.

But it appears this time around Canon and Nikon have made the decision for us. Each has announced new top of the line cameras (Canon 1Dx, Nikon D4) and this time they’ve both seen fit to keep a lid on the megapixel counts.

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White lies and the thin edge of the wedge

It comes as no surprise that North Korean state media digitally altered pictures from Dear Leader’s funeral procession last week. The ploy came unstuck when they were compared to pictures shot at the same time and place by Japanese agency, Kyodo News.

When I say “unstuck” I mean they were caught out, but not that Pyongyang would be at all troubled by that. And North Koreans themselves would be none the wiser, of course.

Unlike the efforts of dictators passed, the digital manipulation in this case was minor and does not appear to have much of an impact on the image beyond the aesthetic. And so some people have asked how much it really matters.

That’s a common question in these circumstances; why adjustments to a picture that improve it while having no other material impact shouldn’t in fact be condoned. We’re talking about cloning open eyes on top of squinting ones, removing litter from the foreground, power lines from the background or a tree branch that’s growing out of someone’s head. Otherwise, why then is dodging, burning, cropping or colour adjustment any different?

It’s surprising how often you hear this argument from strong advocates of photography, given how disturbingly misguided that makes them.

For the rebuttal, public trust is a pretty good place to start.

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In defence of the press

Even in its darkest days Australia functions well by any standard. That’s not by chance but the result of lessons learnt by our ancestors and the systems they put in place as a result. In fact we do so well that we’re prone to take for granted the institutions that helped us get here, like the rule of law, an apolitical military and a free and independent media — all things you mightn’t notice until they’re missing.

There’s no better case study for this right now than the media. While it comes under public and government attack, there’s scarcely a hint of community interest, much less any popular protest by outraged readers. In theory this should surprise, given the media is meant to be at its core the public advocate, and all. But it doesn’t, and in fact you’ve got to conclude the press had it coming.

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Photography for the blind

I wouldn’t normally embark upon the gratuitous spruiking of a brand or product without good reason (unless it’s my own). But if this isn’t a worthy exception, I don’t know what is.

I was invited to meet with a couple of gents from that big Californian fruit company recently. They wanted to talk about the iPhone 4S, its iOS5 software, and in particular the new camera.

Having already used it myself for a few weeks, I doubted there would be much in the way of surprises for me. But wrong I was. It turns out, you see, that buried deep within the menus of its new software, and beyond the everyday notice of you and I, this iPhone is bringing photography to the blind.

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