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RE: Photographers - Let's Educate Users About Correct Image Usage
Great post! We need to spread the knowledge of copyright. SteamCleaners is great by they are focused in plagiarism and barely even mention copyright. I have been toying with the idea of creating a copyright bot, that uses a mechanism much like the block chain watchers. Essentially copyright violations can be reported to the bot and then five real people have to review the violation and agree that it is a violation. Once the violation has been verified the bot could take a number of different actions, such as post a comment much like steam cleaners, or do swarmed flagging of the post, maybe start with the first and if the user is frequently reported it starts flagging.
Oh, keep me posted on that! Something has to be done! I have been searching through new posts to try to find one worthy of sending to CURIE, but withing their guidelines of no travel or photography, I am finding it an impossible task. I had heard it was a great way to make a few Steem bucks!
Sure I have come across some great blog posts, but if they are using a stock image, I will not recommend them. So far, I have not found one post I can put forward, (often because they are using unauthorized stock images and I don't want to see them rewarded for that! ) I have found so may instances of image plagiarism (and copyright infringement), that I can't possible report them all! Sad! There is nowhere to report the copyright infringement anyway!
It is one of the downsides to the open distributed system, it is essentially an open lawless land, with no central authority other than the watchers that validate the blocks in the blockchain, not the content stored within. Both exciting and at the same time fraught with danger and misuse.
The other difficulty is there is no easy way to validate a license of a photo even if someone pays for it. Web distribution licenses are fairly inexpensive, when I purchase and use one I attribute the creator and the place I licensed it from. But there is no way short of contacting the licensor via email or phone, for a third party to really validate that I did indeed purchase that license.
All the agencies I belong to do not allow commercial usage of an image on its own, so any usage would be a violation. A paid license would be OK for a personal blog, and that's it.
So, even if someone licenses one of my images for $1,000, that license has limitations, and the photographer never gives up the right to be the only one allowed to make money from the image. If an image is licensed it can be sold on a product like a cup, a clock, or a calendar etc., but never as a means for others to benefit from its use.
Steemit has entered new territory and has opened a huge can of worms in my opinion!
I believe that Steemit would generally qualify under editorial use, which is allowed under the ShutterStock standard license (and likely other stock photography services). You can make money on editorial use, through subscription payments, payments for individual copies and advertisement. I am sure there is a cutoff on the audience size for editorial use, likely in the range of 500,000 which is the number they list explicitly specify for self published books for sale.
A Steemit post of just the image or the image and a description of the image would not however count as editorial use.
Under Editorial use, images from any of the agencies may not be used for personal or commercial gain. (That's because the copyright holders alone have that right.) As Steemit is primarily about financial gain, and not about news, an image being used on Steemit would count as commercial usage. Steemit is a whole different ball game from the rest of the web where bloggers are not getting paid.
All descriptions I can find for editorial use allow them to be used in magazines and newspapers, all of which also have advertising in them and make money from that advertising. You cannot use editorial images directly in advertising, but you can use them in a newspaper or magazine that makes money off of ads that are printed with the editorial content or of the sale of products that contain editorial content.
I also see documents that say you can use editorial images in books, even books that are for sale.
You can make money off of something that contains editorial images as long as the images are used to enhance the content of the text/media that you are selling; you however cannot use editorial images as printing on merchandise, in an advertisement, directly sell prints of it or otherwise make money directly off the image itself.
https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/2008/03/how-to-use-editorial-use-only-images/
On Steemit, there are people who are making posts where the image itself is the content they post. This is a clear violation of the editorial license, assuming the even licensed it in the first place. However if someone makes a blog post about a photographic technique and use an editorial licensed image as a visual aid to enhance the post about that technique, that is proper editorial use and would not violate the editorial license even if they make money on the post.
It is true, there are a great many people violating the editorial license on Steemit, again assuming they even paid for a license in the first place, you have no arguement from me there. But it is clearly within the editorial license to make money off of a blog post, newspaper article, magazine article, book or other editorial media, that uses an editorial licensed image as editorial content of that product.
There is a difference between Editorial Images and using images editorially. It's not the same thing.
The Shutterstock link was linked to a description of Editorial Images. When an image is listed as Editorial, you purchase only an Editorial license which would allow for use in a magazine, textbook or newspaper etc. where the focus is on the image and what it is about. There will be advertising of course, and the book or magazine can be sold!
For example, someone could write an article about such and such a Castle, with the use of an image of the castle (with no property release available.) . A text book may write about old age, with an image of an elderly person who had agreed to make his image available for editorial use only (so no model release is available.)
Another example would be of a photograph of a train wreck offered as Editorial. That image could only be used to write about that train wreck or about avoiding train wrecks etc.
Using an image editorially on the other hand, means that the image itself provides no personal or monetary gain to the user. A person writing a personal blog about her family, with no monetary gain involved, would qualify as using images editorially. If an image is used on a blog or even a Facebook Business Page in a way that brings monetary gain to the user, that use is classed as commercial.
It is very confusing I know, but it's apples and pears. LOL! Two different ball games in the confusing world of stock photography.
The standard license at ShutterStock includes editorial use: "Physical reproductions, such as books, magazines, advertising posters, and packaging", Up to 500K. This includes photos that are not marked as "editorial use only". Photos that are not marked for editorial use only can be used for editorial or they can be used for packaging and posters. If they are marked for editorial they can be used in an editorial context only which includes newspapers and magazines, as well as blogs, videos and books, even for profit newspapers and magazines can as well as for profit blogs, videos and books.
https://www.shutterstock.com/license-comparison
A little background, I have worked for two major media companies, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and and BuzzFeed, ten years in the industry between the two. Both organizations use licensed photography in articles that they make money on, as well as use imagery in advertisements. I am very familiar with the distinction between editorial work and commercial work and the licensing requirements for both.
Editorial does not mean that the publication cannot make money off of the content they produce that includes images used for editorial purposes. It means that they cannot used them in advertisements, or in any fashion where the photo itself is sold as a product. They can however include them in news articles as long as the image contributes to the topic of the article. If they are going to use an image in an advertisement, or sell prints of them, or merchandise that has the image printed on it, then they must purchase a commercial license if it is offered; if the photo is editorial only they cannot use it for ads or merchandise but they can use it in an article.
Here is an example of an editorial photo licensed by the Star Tribune, a for profit company, from Getty Images/istockphoto: http://www.startribune.com/favorite-bug-protection/417199623/
There are ads all around this article and photo, from which the Star Tribune is receiving profit from.
If editorial only photos could not be used in a for profit editorial context, so few people would purchase a license to their work that they could not make a living.