Image licensing rights managed sub-licence!

[markt]

Hi, I Just had a sale pop-up today and I was wondering if anybody had experienced a similar type sales term for rights managed images (see below).

 

Rights granted include usage in all formats (including electronic format) of Travel Guides, in whole or in part, and right to sublicense such rights to third parties worldwide provided this falls within the agreed print run. Duration 10 editions (provided the content change is less than 25% from the original edition). Re-use.

 

I accept re-use as fairly common now-a-days on rights managed images for book publications, however, i'm concerned about the 'right to sub-licence such rights to third parties worldwide' why would this be included, and will there be an additional sale for any sub-licence agreement? 

 

Sorry if this has already been discussed, I haven't visited the forums for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

[dustydingo]

Mark, DavidC in particular has tried to get some reaction to this exact licensing agreement, but I'm afraid it usually takes a distant second place to discussion on other apparently more weighty matters . . . but for the record, it really is a deplorable clause.

 

dd

[losdemas]

Alamy should cease this sub-licencing clause immediately.  How on earth can that be justified?  If they are giving the rights away to sub-licence, then how will it be possible to verify subsequent abuse of image usage?  We will simply not know who has legally licensed what or when.

 

If we wrongly accuse someone of image abuse and it turns out that they have genuinely licensed the image under such a third-party agreement, then everyone will get upset: the contributor, the original licensee, the third party and Alamy.

 

Pack it in now please, Alamy!

[Allan Bell]

Also not only do the contributors lose out on relicensing but SO DO ALAMY. Drop the clause and make both contributors and yourselves richer Alamy. You will have more to give to your chosen charity too.

 

Allan

[markt]

I also think this clause should cease.

 

As I understand it this image may now be sub-licensed and I will see no additional licensing fee, if so, thats crazy. The image in question is a regular seller and should / would of continued to earn revenue for years to come, though I now suspect sales will nose-dive for worldwide book publications.

 

I will contact Alamy for additional clarification on this clause, I'd rather sacrifice this sale than agree to a sublicense clause.

[David F]

Alamy should cease this sub-licencing clause immediately.  How on earth can that be justified?  If they are giving the rights away to sub-licence, then how will it be possible to verify subsequent abuse of image usage?  We will simply not know who has legally licensed what or when.

 

If we wrongly accuse someone of image abuse and it turns out that they have genuinely licensed the image under such a third-party agreement, then everyone will get upset: the contributor, the original licensee, the third party and Alamy.

 

Pack it in now please, Alamy!

 

+1

 

How on earth can granting the right to sub license be justified.  Come on Alamy explain!

[Linda]

Totally not right to let third parties profit off of our images.

This is complete mismanagement of our intellectual property and Alamy's customers are going to be really pissed off when I or my law firm finds an image discovered and the first company  and their 3rd party license customer gets a nasty legal letter that is sure to ruin their day. How do we know that third party will not abuse the image and resell it? How do we know they will take an image with no release and end up using it for an ad or sensitive use?

 

 

That happens,Alamy will most likely have lost that customer and eventually the photographer as well that will not be putting up with that.

 

Isn't this turning an exclusive image or a 'rights managed' license into 'royalty free' with a time limit?

 

 

Why is the photo industry like this?
I can not rent my condo to a third party without the written permission from my building. No other business operates this foolishly than the photo biz.

 

L

[Sheila Smart]

And there goes "rights managed"! How can Alamy ever control how a rights managed image is going to be used by parties which are not known to them and have not signed any sort of agreement of use. Also, has Alamy entered into a different agreement with the purchasers because according to the clause Grant of rights and restrictions it states:

 

"The Image(s) may not be sublicensed, resold or otherwise made available for use or distribution separately or detached from a product or web page. For example, the Image(s) may be used as an integral part of a web page design, but may not be made available for downloading separately or in a format designed or intended for permanent storage or re-use by website users. Similarly, your customers may be provided with copies of the Image(s) as an integral part of work product, but may not be provided with the Image(s) or permitted to use the Image(s) separately."

 

I think its time that Alan Capel put in his two cents on this one! Sheila

[John Mitchell]

I haven't seen this one before, but clauses like these sound almost meaningless to me. I guess that's why I'm not a lawyer.

 

Are we witnessing the birth of a new licensing type, "rights mismanaged" ?

[Sheila Smart]

I haven't seen this one before, but clauses like these sound almost meaningless to me. I guess that's why I'm not a lawyer.

 

Are we witnessing the birth of a new licensing type, "rights mismanaged" ?

...or not at all!

 

Sheila

[David F]

Alamy, I signed up with you because I was looking to licence the majority of my imagery Rights Managed.  You now appear to be introducing a Royalty Free model on my RM imagery just like you told me you were doing with video "after" my submission.  For example:

 

"We sell our video via a simple licensing model that takes elements of both RF and RM. All video on Alamy is sold under this single hybrid licensing model,  there is no distinction between RM and RF"

 

Your attitude was if you don't like the new terms and pricing structure remove your video.  That effectively stopped me uploading thousands of videos.

 

It seems to me you are now planning to do this with my stills only without telling me this time.

 

Come on Alamy, I make my entire living as a photographer, even with my small portfolio on here things like this matter to my business- you need to be honest here.

 

David

 

[Mark Baigent]

This seems like a huge change, I am surprised that It was not announced to the photographers by Alamy.

[Abiyoyo]

Markt, are you under the Novel use Licence?

 

I am newbie since last October and I have accepted this Novel use Licence, well, to be honest I do not know if I have another option.

According with the text below Alamy can do "nearly" whatever they want with my images while I am under this Novel use Licence that I can not op-out till next April

 

• 9. Novel use Licences {participation in novel use is optional}
  • 9.1 you grant Alamy permission to sell your Images at any price and by any method we feel appropriate without Alamy having to consult you.
  • 9.2 In addition to the Promotion rights set out in 8.3 above, Alamy shall have the right to supply Images to third parties without having to consult you. Examples may include, but are not limited to;
    • 9.2.1 Trials with new customers
    • 9.2.2 Prototypes/proof of concept
  • 9.3 Where Alamy does not make a charge to these third-parties, the Contributor will not receive payment.

[Alamy]

Sorry the wording here isn't very clear. The wording on the licence details often has to be approved by the customer and sometimes it can get a bit confusing, this is one of those cases. 

 

Basically here, we’re granting the customer worldwide rights.  Many publishers use co-edition partners to translate and publish in countries outside their own.  These are 3^rd parties.  The book is the same, just translated. You'll also notice that this is a re-use meaning the client has purchased the image before for a previous edition.

 

Alamy

[Alamy]

Alamy, I signed up with you because I was looking to licence the majority of my imagery Rights Managed.  You now appear to be introducing a Royalty Free model on my RM imagery just like you told me you were doing with video "after" my submission.  For example:

 

"We sell our video via a simple licensing model that takes elements of both RF and RM. All video on Alamy is sold under this single hybrid licensing model,  there is no distinction between RM and RF"

 

Your attitude was if you don't like the new terms and pricing structure remove your video.  That effectively stopped me uploading thousands of videos.

 

It seems to me you are now planning to do this with my stills only without telling me this time.

 

Come on Alamy, I make my entire living as a photographer, even with my small portfolio on here things like this matter to my business- you need to be honest here.

 

David

 

 

Our video terms have always been the same and the licence terms were all clearly laid out in the online information for contributors. We're sorry if this was not clear enough for you prior to your first video submission.

[markt]

Thanks for the clarification Alamy

 

Perhaps a good idea to drop the word sublicense from the agreement altogether.

[DavidC]

I make no apology cutting and pasting the stuff below from a topic which I started a couple of weeks ago - the original posting was hijacked by the weasel appreciation society and the substance of this stuff was lost....

 

A sale earlier this month increases my dislike for the licensing policy/policies:

Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Magazine - Print only
Print run: up to 100,000
Placement: Inside
Image Size: 1 page
Start: 03 October 2013
End: 03 November 2013
Print, print and digital version, or standalone digital plus archive. UK, Worldwide and in Foreign Languages. Images can be sublicensed to international publishers and re-edited into bookazine format in the context of the original article use only.

 

This is an extension of the syndication fiasco which allows newspapers to commercially arrange for the re-use of a story/picture page worldwide without any enhancement of the license fee. In this case the criteria governing the re-use seems further relaxed into bookazine (whatever that means) by virtue of a SUBLICENSE which appears to be granted in the terms....

 

If this agreement was achieved by our dear agency then who wrote that clause - and who insisted upon it - I hear the scritchy-scratchy claws of weasels at work.......

 

I do not see that the Alamy response addresses either of these concerns - newspapers are still syndicating worldwide (and they don't do that for nothing)  - and when something is re-edited into a "bookazine"  (Oh please !) that is a new usage it is no longer the original article.....sublicensing is the reallocation of a licensing contract to a third party and can be for a financial gain - the more complicated you get the more wriggle room there is for those of the weasel profession. KISS is a virtue......

[markt]

 

Markt, are you under the Novel use Licence?

 

I am newbie since last October and I have accepted this Novel use Licence, well, to be honest I do not know if I have another option.

According with the text below Alamy can do "nearly" whatever they want with my images while I am under this Novel use Licence that I can not op-out till next April

 

• 9. Novel use Licences {participation in novel use is optional}
  • 9.1 you grant Alamy permission to sell your Images at any price and by any method we feel appropriate without Alamy having to consult you.
  • 9.2 In addition to the Promotion rights set out in 8.3 above, Alamy shall have the right to supply Images to third parties without having to consult you. Examples may include, but are not limited to;
    • 9.2.1 Trials with new customers
    • 9.2.2 Prototypes/proof of concept
  • 9.3 Where Alamy does not make a charge to these third-parties, the Contributor will not receive payment.

Abiyoyo, welcome to the forum

 

I opted out of novel-use from the beginning, for me the pricing on this scheme is so low its simply not worth considering.

[DavidC]

Welcome back folks - the restore button is in full working order !!!!

 

Now, what about those sublicensing, group sales and syndication issues......

[Joe Gaul]

Thanks to Alamy for trying to clear this up but I still feel that the licencing terms need to be clarified ie changed as they will lead to confusion not just with copyright owners (the photographers) but with image buyers who may presume that they can sell on images they have licensed. This goes beyond royalty free and is effectively a presumption of the allocation of copyright which could lead to a legal nightmare. 

[Phil Robinson]

I know what I think it means. Many ranges of travel guides - Eyewitness, Rough Guides, Lonely Planet etc - publish foreign editions. Some do it themselves, more often they are handled by a foreign partner publisher. Go into any bookshop abroad and you will find lots of very recognisable books that look the same as the English version, except they are in a foreign language and tend to have different publisher on the spine.

 

If these foreign editions are taken into account in the original deal (including, it seems, maximum total print run) then that is fair enough, though of course the fee should reflect this. That is what this clause refers to, but the wording leaves it open to other licensing as well. 

[losdemas]

Again - thanks to Alamy for posting, reinstating this thread, and attempting to clear this up, but I am in agreement with Phil, above.  If the wording of the licensing agreement leads to panic and confusion among the contributors, then surely the same wording will result in confusion amongst buyers?  It may possibly be clear on the day of the license, but somewhere down the line, someone may well (mistakenly) decide that their agreement with Alamy gives them carte blanche to do as they wish with the image, no?

 

Of course, I don't know exactly what the customer sees, but the wording must be clarified for both contributors and purchasers of licenses: something beyond small print in a contract which may never be read.

 

Your continual efforts are appreciated, Alamy.