Licenses in perpetuity

[Nachohy]

Hi everyone,

 

I joined Alamy recently. Yesterday I sold a photo (my second). 10 dollars, ok very low, I know that, but what really surprised me  was to see the duration of the license as unlimited. Licensed in perpetuity.

 

All my images are RM, and what I thought is that the period of time for use would be limited. That's how I've always understood and used RM. You limit the rights, including its duration. That's one of the reasons I want to do RM. I don't want to license my photo to anyone, forever. A perpetuity license to me sounds almost like a RF, like giving away the photo for peanuts, forever...

 

I can maybe live with low rates, but if it's for a license in perpetuity, not so sure. Shouldn't Alamy give us the option of not offering perpetuity licenses? If I start seeing my photos sold in perpetuity for a few dollars I'll probably delete the account. Not worth it.

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

[meanderingemu]

such is the reality now.  as for given option to opt out, then they could just do this

 

 

[Steve F]

Alamy has previously clarified this as archival rights.

 

e.g. a photo is used in an online newspaper article. The article can be online forever in theory. No one wants to come along in e.g. 5 years and remove photos from old articles. I have to say that I agree in this case. It's a different case than doing an advertising campaign or doing a new print run of e.g. a book.

[meanderingemu]

12 minutes ago, Steve F said:

Alamy has previously clarified this as archival rights.

 

e.g. a photo is used in an online newspaper article. The article can be online forever in theory. No one wants to come along in e.g. 5 years and remove photos from old articles. I have to say that I agree in this case. It's a different case than doing an advertising campaign or doing a new print run of e.g. a book.

 

shouldn't the licence term reflect this ?

 

here are the term for one 3 years ago:

"One use in a single editorial article used within web versions of titles from the same group. Digital usage includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article. Country: United Kingdom"

 

 

no confusion, no perpetuity, and we know that if i see the image because the article is still on-line (it is) this adheres to licence terms. 

[Steve F]

2 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

shouldn't the licence term reflect this ?

 

here are the term for one 3 years ago:

"One use in a single editorial article used within web versions of titles from the same group. Digital usage includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article. Country: United Kingdom"

 

 

no confusion, no perpetuity, and we know that if i see the image because the article is still on-line (it is) this adheres to licence terms. 

 

I think that the wording you've given is clear and I agree this should be used

[meanderingemu]

4 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

I think that the wording you've given is clear and I agree this should be used

 

and this is Alamy wording.  I went through recent sales and i noticed the "in perpetuity" came back on a specific well known large buyer of image.  I'm thinking the wording is possibly part of the client's request when they opened up bidding for price, they also specified this was wording to be used. 

[Nachohy]

2 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

I think that the wording you've given is clear and I agree this should be used

 

3 hours ago, Steve F said:

Alamy has previously clarified this as archival rights.

 

e.g. a photo is used in an online newspaper article. The article can be online forever in theory. No one wants to come along in e.g. 5 years and remove photos from old articles. I have to say that I agree in this case. It's a different case than doing an advertising campaign or doing a new print run of e.g. a book.

 

 

This makes sense. And yes, I think the wording is very important and should reflect that. Thanks. 

[Janis D]

"In perpetuity" also applies to TV and movie uses. We see occasional licenses for some of our news images that appear to have been used as stills in documentaries

[Julia Hiebaum]

Thank you for mentioning this topic.

I have been a contributor since 2007 with all my portfolio sold as RM and this month I had my first two sales with a duration of "perpetuity". One of them was for a presentation/newsletter - use in a presentation/talk, of course with no information about the buyer listed. I emailed the Alamy team about it, as I am concerned about the unlimited usage any client can have with my images, unfortunately I was told that most clients now demand perpetual usage of our images. Not only would it have been nice to get a least notified about this new licencing model in advance, what really worries me are photographs showing people in them. Who guarantees me that the photos of my friends and family won't be misused or re-used in a new way that could be damaging to them without having any legal right-all for a few dollars? Maybe after a decade or later? 

Another concern of mine is that, what if a client would like to purchase an exclusive licence but won't be able to get a certain image as it has already been sold in perpetuity for much less to a competing brand or company?

My only sensible decision so far was to change most of my model-released images to "editorial only", as this will hopefully cut out most unknown buyers, and not upload certain images in the future.