Freelance Alert

[viridari]

Noticed he asked for all of his prints and they only gave him the specific one that he had discovered them trying to sell.

 

[rlouzan]

Yes, plus some insults.

I am missing something? Did he not get his print back?

 

[DNG]

"Money is the root of all evil..... Money is neither good nor evil. Good or Evil is in the hands of the one who has possession to decide." The second statement hits the mark more closely. Power is the root of the evil; money is just one source of power. $4,000 is no money at all! Who would act like that just for $4,000? The lawyers and the Times want the power to decide; they want control. As one of the neo-cons said, "The war in Iraq is not about oil; we can buy all the oil we want. It's about controlling the oil so someone else doesn't.' (paraphrased but says it all). The questions is, why would they take a stand over this one photograph? To the precedent for all other photographs and all other photographers. That's what lawyers and judges do. I stopped short sending in a photo to the local Baltimore Sun newspaper when I noticed that it said that the copyright would be signed over to them. So, no photograph. They are now on the verge of going completely out of business.

Yes, Power is the real subject here... And the Quote from the Bible verse in it's context will bare this out.

Thanks for the better example.

 

[peterm1]

I have seen this before, its been around for quite a while.

I like Zimbel's argument that its like hiring a car - you have an agreement with the hiring company to use it for a limited period, not agreement to keep it as your own and to sell it. This pretty well sums it up.

I am pretty sure no court would countenance the NY Time's argument which is essentially (when it strip it of its legal verbage) that they wrongfully kept this photo many years ago so its now theirs, simply by dint of it being in their possession for so long. (Back to law again, I believe appropriate legal terms for this conduct are "unlawful detainer" and tort of "conversion" Both are civil worngs but usually also found mirrored in criminal statutes. So I ask - if you unlawfully convert someone's property for your own use and get away with it for a few years before you are found out, it is then yours by law - I don't think so!)

There seemed not to be an argument that they had a license to use the image (in fact license to use it only once based on Zimbel's description of his terms of trade).

In non legal terms their argument was "We have it - you don't. So yarboo and sucks to you! Bugger off!"

Would a court find in their favor - pretty much not a chance I would have thought. But that's not the issue to them of course. Not initially at least. They clearly hoped that by putting the "frighteners" on Zimbel he would fold his tend and go quietly into the night.

Why did they their change mind?

(a) He was persistent. (b) They knew they had not a legal leg to stand on, and most importantly to them (c) They did not want to chance a court case that might result in a legal precedent that would force them to change their practice and manner of handling all the other freelance photographers. So they cut their losses.

But my bet is that other freelancers still get screwed over in much the same kind of way.

By chance, I was reading a bio of Robert Capa last night and this kind of unethical behavior supported by strong arm tactics, on the part of the industry, is exactly why he formed Magnum (named incidentally after a magnum of champagne, not the weapon -typical for Capa who was quite a mensch but thats naother story).

And he was tired of having no bargaining power - seeing his work, produced at much personal risk having to be sold to publishers at their price (often in his view an unfair price) and them then insisting they owned then owned the copyright.

So this kind of crap has been perpetrated by the industry for a long long time - simply because they can.

 

[kbg32]

Bravo George!