A nice guy (getting screwed?)

[petert]

I just sent a message to a friend privately... then I thought I'd open the floor to TPF and see what the general comments were... Get a beer - this will be long...

History: last month, I was approached by a model I had shot over the summer. She told me that she absolutely loved the finished shots (I think there were 10 total) I'd sent her (for the record, here's one of them - link). She showed them to her boyfriend who also thought they were great. Turns out that he loved the shots too ...it turns out that he has his own clothing line/company and wanted me to shoot his Winter ad and catalog!! a major win in my column! ...we meet soon after and talk about concepts and everything he wanted to shoot... no problems there. So, he gave me his card... I cruise over to his clothing website and what do I find? Two of my shots posted on his commercial website, no credit given to me at all! ...but wait, there's more - he trimmed off my copyright logo and the "all rights reserved" information (from the previously linked image) and put his own logo on the chest of the model/girlfriend! ...he did something similar to the other image too. Turns out that these were on each of their MySpace accounts as well. When I confronted him on it, he admitted editing the shots, but didn't know that it was an issue posting them to his commercial site (FYI: it's clearly written in the TFP contract that I had the model sign; legally, that makes her guilty or complacent in the theft). to date, I didn't do the shoot and he's only removed one of the two images. As my lawyer said, it might be time for that pointed letter with "Attorney at Law" printed on the letterhead. That usually gets a response.

So, the funny part is that if he'd asked, I'd have probably given him the images for free (with some limitations like my name had to be on or near the shot, or use the original released image intact)... as it turned out, I called a lawyer who gave me council on the issue... His recommendation was to try to resolve it without his involvement because that's when things get messy...

Yesterday: I find a stack of cards for a male model/stripper I also shot over the summer in a local boutique. He had asked me if he could use some of my shots for this business card... no problem - I even did the layout and sent him a JPG to upload to the printers. So, I find his card and finally made my way to his MySpace account written on the card (are you seeing a pattern here?). Over in his gallery are the Photoshop'ed final images I gave him... and a few "lifted" from my proof gallery from the shoot... Because he's a "friend", I asked him to tell me my original image numbers and I'd process them for him (without the PROOF written across the center).

So, on another "friend's" MySpace site, I also found shots that were lifted from yet another proof gallery. All these proof galleries are locked behind a username/password for me and the models, so obviously they're swiping the shots from my simple JAlbum generated HTML galleries. In this case, I'm probably going to let it go (nothing I could do anyway)...

What's this all getting to?... well, simply put, am I being too nice a guy? If I were "pro" and this was my only source of income, I'm getting it in the rear! It's got me thinking that I should either learn enough Flash to make my galleries or start sending 72ppi (or less) proof-sheets from PS... or move to a "I choose the final images" mode and stop being such a nice guy, not to mention, make it a bit more difficult to lift the shots from any browser.

What I'd like to know from the community is if you've also had similar experiences (and I'm sure there are equal stories, if not worse stories). Are you allowing your models to select from a group of images, and if so, are you sending images in proof-sheets or doing something different?

Rant over... thanks for your time - hope you enjoyed your beer...

Peter

[Daniel Bates]

I'm interested to hear what TPF says about this too.



Tis the season, I guess... I just got screwed as well.

[iCe]

I don't mean this as an insult to anyone that just picked up a digital camera and reads this... but... the "market" is getting saturated with DSLR's. For very little money people can buy a digital camera SLR or P&S that will allow them to create very good images. The "black magic" of being a pro is waning. Not because what they do is easy bit because the perception is that what they do is easy. As a good friend of mine says, the P on a Canon means "professional". So, while you are proud of your work (as you should be), the general population will perceive it as just another "pitcher" so it's not a big deal if I borrow it.

Along the same lines, I took a bunch of High School Football images earlier this year. Dozens of them showed up on Myspace. I thought that it was kind of funny because I would have given them a JPG suitable for making an 11 x 14 if they had asked. I don't know how they stole the image... but it was stolen... It makes me want to go to digital watermarking but even with that how much will it cost to recover the work that was stolen? And worse, it won't stop anyone from stealing it again.

[petert]

Originally Posted by iCe

but... the "market" is getting saturated with DSLR's. For very little money people can buy a digital camera SLR or P&S that will allow them to create very good images. The "black magic" of being a pro is waning. Not because what they do is easy bit because the perception is that what they do is easy. As a good friend of mine says, the P on a Canon means "professional". So, while you are proud of your work (as you should be), the general population will perceive it as just another "pitcher" so it's not a big deal if I borrow it.

Yeah, the market is REALLY saturated by mall headshots-style shooters. The thing is that is a differentiator is the quality of the end product, right? I mean, I could give my grandma a P&S, drag her into the studio, put a model in front of her and she'd probably get a passable shot (I guess). But, she couldn't tune the image or really make it pop... then again, how "point and shoot" is Photoshop Elements for things like that? If it's as simple as pushing the Staples "Easy" button, then we're all screwed!

Originally Posted by iCe

Along the same lines, I took a bunch of High School Football images earlier this year. Dozens of them showed up on Myspace. I thought that it was kind of funny because I would have given them a JPG suitable for making an 11 x 14 if they had asked. I don't know how they stole the image... but it was stolen... It makes me want to go to digital watermarking but even with that how much will it cost to recover the work that was stolen? And worse, it won't stop anyone from stealing it again.

The part that really bugged me was that I had a TFP contract that said the image was not to be used for commercial purposes. It just seems that folks are just signing these things and going "whatever" and doing as they please. Maybe this was just my turn to "get it", but I came from a world that honored agreements. I guess that until some of these folks start getting sued, they're not going to pay attention to the agreements they sign. I'm actually sure if anyone's ever taken anyone to court for a TFP contract (have they?)...

So, the bottom line question remains: are folks not creating web-galleries and sending proof-sheets at low res so that they can't be cropped to usable MySpace images?

[photobykim]

i'm sorry to hear this happened to you not once but several times peter. that's hard, you'd think them being friends that they might have just asked. Let us know what you decide to do and how it all turns out.

[petert]

Originally Posted by photobykim

i'm sorry to hear this happened to you not once but several times peter. that's hard, you'd think them being friends that they might have just asked. Let us know what you decide to do and how it all turns out.

...yeah - I'm starting to feel like a doormat... and the "just asking" part is what blows my mind. I'm such a nice guy that 99.9% of the time, I'd say "yes" and ask "what format do you want it in?"

[petert]

...and (just for fun), here's the images that came from the copyright infringement case... copied directly from the offending website... the sunglasses is still posted out there... joy!

On the second image, note that he added his logo to the edge of the sunglasses (implying that he made them?)... I'm sure the original manufacturer wouldn't appreciate that...

[AndrewCCM]

We pretty much have in-house proofing these days. No galleries unless they pay for it...digital negs if they pay for it. We make little to nothing from online galleries (orders)...Once they see the image online, the newness has worn off... Remember, this generation is the cameraphone gen...they see 10s of thousands of pictures online most on Myspace taken with a P&S or cameraphone... They glance and move on. Prints (and even more so.. quality prints/enlargements) mean so little to this new cameraphone generation. Sad. So bottom line, depending on your demographic..."stealing" an image to put online doesn't even phase em. They are used to right-click, copy, paste....and have been doing it since they were in elementary school.

For certain clientèle, I will just be sure and go over the release in detail with them hoping that will suffice...But I am about making money on the front-side and not on the back-end... Getting tougher every day, every minute, every second....

I guess you could always get yourself a Vonage phone line, record VM as "so in so, Attorney at Law", print up some letterhead and send them a polite cease and desist letter. Just gotta ask yourself if it's worth it...99% of my clients will never make any real money off my work...so...I would just let it go... If there was a big commercial account tied to it...then that would be different.

To be honest, I find the best thing to do is just call and SPEAK to them and explain your feelings. Most people respond to cordial conversation better than threatening emails or letters. Also, it gives you the opportunity to feel better and not get bent out of shape worrying about it.

Just some random quick thoughts on the subject...Not sure if it helps or not.. LOL

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Pete if you want to go through the effort contact MySpace about every specific violation-ie send them specific links to each pic that is yours and they will pull them. Since they were bought out they have been going on a rip the idiot hunt on copyright violators since they knew that the Music Side was going to cost them $$$$$$$ to ASCAP and the artists for all the violations (people putting up © songs on their pages) and now they realize that people are putting ripped off photos on their pages too so they will clean all that up. (Now if they hotlinked to your site then I believe MySpace assumes that you gave permission for use and won't touch that pic but then you can bust the source pic yourself).

Don't be a nice guy they ARE NOT! Before jumping on a lawyer hay wagon and the costs involved look up the law-Millenium Copyright act (start by searching TPF)- and then write the violators a letter about what they did and what the consequences can be and that if you must you will get a lawyer and with the clothing guy you talk a bit tougher and get him to pay you for his use of your work that has already occured and if he wishes to use images in 2007 he will have to sign a licenssing fee agreement with you are be ready for your lawyer.

[metagore]

Yes... I enjoyed my beer, and I'm now enjoying my second one. :)

I'm very interested to hear what some of the 'pros' on here have to say about this as well. I want to go pro within the next two years and I don't want to find myself in this type of situation either.

The way I thought that I might mitigate something like this was to only offer prints that cannot be scanned to prevent people from only buying on large print and then reproducing them on their own. Secondly, any access to the 'negatives' would come at a premium price. Lastly I'd want to investigate a 'reproduction' clause in a customer contract that would give me the legal right to just bill them for each reproduction I might discover.

Pros, am I way off base in what I'm considering, how do you handle this?

*************************************

Edit - In the time it took me to type this, Andrew answered some of my questions.

[iCe]

Just from what I've seen happen here (Zeroendless for one) and something that I heard from Fran, I won't be putting my work on the web if I ever get to the point of selling it. That's a shame too because I enjoy sharing what I do with people. I learn from it.

Contracts have to be enforced to have any strength... If it's on the web, for whatever reason, people seem to ignore photographers rights. Often in our faces...

[AndrewCCM]

Mike,

It's pretty darn tough to offer prints that cannot be scanned. The problem in a lot of cases, they'll scan and deal with the quality loss...Many do not care... they just want to email them around in smaller format anyway.

On a separate note, we explain the digital negative add-on in detail. We actually sell this with most of our packages and at a premium. We really do not make much on reprints at all...so (For us)..the digital negative upsell was much more profitable and easier to deal with than the small little minimum order 3 months later.

For customers that we think would be inspired by larger prints, we'll often pick 1 or 2 that we'll produce ahead of time to break out at the proofing session. It only costs us a few dollars, and often results in further sales. Many people have not seen a quality larger scale image and are wow'd by them ...

[JPalmer]

If you put photos on the internet....they will be stolen. Period.

If somebody wants them bad enough...they will find a way to get them from the net.

Ask the guy if he would call the police if you took some of his clothes and put your own labels on there.

[petert]

Originally Posted by AndrewCCM

It's pretty darn tough to offer prints that cannot be scanned.

I would think that's impossible to create a print that can't be scanned...

[iCe]

True. Non-photographers know almost nothing about the image they are looking at. That astounds me but it's how it is.

The digital negative idea is pretty popular. I've heard "we don't try to make money on reprints" in two workshops. And Fran is the master of selling large so I hear you.

The technology is really putting the hurt on studios. When I went to Tim Babins (very good) workshop one of the handouts that we recieved was a booklet titled the Perfect Storm by Henry J. Oles. It's something that studio owners should probably read.