Selling Your Soul
Imagine you get unique footage of an alien craft landing, film a miraculous escape or capture images of Bill Gates frolicking naked on a Northland beach. What should you do? (Apart -- in the latter case -- from seeking immediate treatment?) The one thing you shouldn't do is send them to TV One or TV3.
"Have you ever witnessed an event you thought others should see, but there wasn't any time to call reporters and camera crews to the scene?" TVNZ's Your Cam page breathlessly intones. "When there's no time to wait, you can record news footage on your digital video camera or phone to send it straight to our reporters at ONE News. Like the footage of the Bali and London bombings and 9/11, pictures you capture may be the only ones taken as the event unfolds, and YOUR CAM is about capturing news as it happens."
And, it also happens, about capturing your rights.
Item 4 of Your Cam's Terms and Conditions states it plainly;
I assign all copyright in the
footage in perpetuity to
TVNZ.
TV3's Terms and Conditions employ more legalese, and much smaller type;
You grant TV3 a perpetual,
royalty-free, non-exclusive, sub-licenseable right and license to use,
reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works
from, distribute, perform, play, make available to the public, and
exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to your
contribution worldwide and/or to incorporate your contribution in other
works in any media now known or later developed for the full term of
any rights that may exist in your contribution.
That means if the BBC pick up your clip, or CNN or any of the other news networks around the world, the rights holder might charge them for it but you won't get a bean.
This point was highlighted in the 22 July edition of Mediawatch on National Radio (the piece concerned starts about 8.5 minutes in).
It may seem trivial, but consider the value of a single celebrity photograph. It's what the paparazzi business is built on. There are whole agencies specialising in nothing else, with in-demand shots going for thousands of dollars.
Don't throw your rights away!
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Comments
Geoff, you should do the same analysis on open source GPL.
Same principle. You give away your valuable rights so other people can profit from them and you get nothing.
Who profits? Well .... IBM/Novell/RedHat (services), Apple/HP (hardware), Microsoft (patent license), Google (advertising). Even if no one profits, you still get nothing.
Same result for you.
I guess that's why most people who release code under GPL nowadays are well paid for it & work for those companies who make the money out of open source.
Posted by: Pinky Boo | July 25, 2007 8:26 PM
Good on you Geoff for posting that one. Its typical of big corporations to try and dupe the unsuspecting ( and unknowing ) public out of photo and video copyright. As a freelance photographer I come up against this wall all the time.
Newspapers are just as bad - "can you send us a photo of such and such event?" "certainly what are you willing to pay me for it?" " Oh we dont pay for photos , but we'll put your name to it" "Sorry, putting my name to it wont apy the bills...."
The thing is, TV and News Papers WILL and DO pay for content. How often do you see a photo printed or on their websites with REUTERS as a byline? I bet they dont give content away for free!
Posted by: Chris | July 25, 2007 11:51 AM