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Alamy's obligations

  1. Alamy agrees to use its reasonable commercial endeavours to grant Licences in accordance with your instructions. Alamy will not be liable if it (or a Distributor) sells or otherwise makes available an item of Content outside the instructions specified by you.
  2.  
  3. Alamy agrees to use its reasonable commercial endeavours to obtain reasonable Licence Fees.

 

4 pence??????

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I am outraged for you. This laughs in the face of everything we stand for. In actuality, they are giving away the images but to give a nod to legality, stick a couple of cents on them.

You, especially, I’m sure, must not have put all the effort into your large portfolio to only have your ego stroked by someone wanting an image. Ha! No, even us more casual members desire to make a decent price for our efforts.

PA media buying Alamy was pretty much opening the door to the henhouse and allowing the vermin to stroll in to partake of the eggs at will, then lying to the hen about where the eggs went.

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Compared to this situation our UK politics at the moment are squeaky clean!!!

Well said, Ian.

Jim.

 

It's like 'a form of nepotism with deceit'. Not an ethical way of working.

Edited by Broad Norfolk
Additional comment.
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It is now a week and there has been no reply from Alamy. I did forward that email message posted above to Emily Shelley last Friday.

 

Perhaps there is just no explanation for why PA Media/Alamy are using our images in syndication packages and misreporting that it is a UK national newspaper doing so.

 

Perhaps there is simply no justifcation for why PA Media/ Alamy pay ony 4p payment to the photographer in return for 'more than 25' syndicated sales.

 

Clearly, the lack of reply speaks volumes ........

 

........but probably best for me not to try and interpret the message too much. 

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1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

It is now a week and there has been no reply from Alamy. I did forward that email message posted above to Emily Shelley last Friday.

 

Perhaps there is just no explanation for why PA Media/Alamy are using our images in syndication packages and misreporting that it is a UK national newspaper doing so.

 

Perhaps there is simply no justifcation for why PA Media/ Alamy pay ony 4p payment to the photographer in return for 'more than 25' syndicated sales.

 

Clearly, the lack of reply speaks volumes ........

 

........but probably best for me not to try and interpret the message too much. 

 

I hope they aren't just going to ignore you, Alamy are our agents which means they work for us. They are accountable to us.

 

Maybe phone and jog their memories as to the fact you sent them a message.

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2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

It is now a week and there has been no reply from Alamy. I did forward that email message posted above to Emily Shelley last Friday.

 

Perhaps there is just no explanation for why PA Media/Alamy are using our images in syndication packages and misreporting that it is a UK national newspaper doing so.

 

Perhaps there is simply no justifcation for why PA Media/ Alamy pay ony 4p payment to the photographer in return for 'more than 25' syndicated sales.

 

Clearly, the lack of reply speaks volumes ........

 

........but probably best for me not to try and interpret the message too much. 

 

Hi Ian,

 

James A here - I've been looking into this to find out how things have been set up. Sorry you've not had a satisfactory response up to this point. 

 

First off I just wanted to say that I completely understand all the areas of concern associated with this. The images for this deal with PA Media (who we have treated like any other customer in this case) were available from the Novel Use pool only and as such we've experimented offering specific packages like this in order to take market share away from our competitors.

 

I know you have quoted the main contract above, but for Novel Use the contract states:

 

  1. If you grant Alamy the right to grant Novel Use Licences, you give Alamy permission to: (i) sell your Content at any price, by any method and for any use we feel appropriate; and (ii) make the Content available to third parties without consulting you, including but not limited to trials with potential Customers, prototypes/proof of concept and high volume low unit price licences. Where Alamy does not make a charge to these third parties, you will not receive payment.

To this end I do not believe any breach of our obligations has taken place. 

 

The main difference from a normal licence with this deal though is the syndication element - it's not something we would normally offer as part of a licence package and your feedback here has made us take a closer look at it - we will certainly be considering our position on any renewal of these packages once the current deal ceases early next year.

 

In the meantime, if you'd like me to opt your images out of the Novel Use Pool early to ensure your images are not part of these sales then please confirm and I will make that happen.

 

Concerning your point about the the licence details - they are not exact because we are limited by the technology as to what exactly we can enter in the usage terms. Our sales team in this case picked the closest widest ranging licence that was available for the licence package itself.

 

Hopefully that addresses things - as you'll know my time to respond back on the forum regularly is quite limited, so for any other follow up on this I'd be happy to chat on the phone with you directly to talk around any other points you have in the most time efficient way. I believe you already have my direct email address however if not, please send an email to the usual CR address for my attention and I'll get back to you to suggest a time to talk.

 

Cheers

 

James Allsworth

Head of Content

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1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

As I mentioned this same thing came up previously and it looked to me that the user was a national newspaper. I actually wrote to that newsaper complaining about how they were squeezing photographers. I reported that I had done so on the forum. Then I got an email from Alamy telling me that I was in breach of contract to contact a client and if  repeated that there would be sanctions against me not just a firm warning. And all the time it wasn't a national newspaper that had used the image but PA Media/Alamy. I could have been told that at the time but wasn't!

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure I understand how Alamy could reprimand you, Section 4.5

 

  1. Where the Content has been licensed to a Customer in accordance with this Contract, you will not contact that Customer for any reason pertaining to the sale or the use of the Content.

 

Seems to only cover contacting a Customer who is a party with a Licence granted by Alamy.  Ironically could reprimand us for contacting them, since the Customer that was licenced the image is Alamy's parent company.  

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1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

Not sure I understand how Alamy could reprimand you, Section 4.5

 

  1. Where the Content has been licensed to a Customer in accordance with this Contract, you will not contact that Customer for any reason pertaining to the sale or the use of the Content.

 

Seems to only cover contacting a Customer who is a party with a Licence granted by Alamy.  Ironically could reprimand us for contacting them, since the Customer that was licenced the image is Alamy's parent company.  

 

 

Probably the Alamy staff member who reprimanded me wasn't in the know about PA Media being the real user.  They just picked up on what I said on the forum about contacting a client. 

Edited by geogphotos
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More generally this combination idea is excellent. PA Media has 1000 journalists, Alamy as 300 million images. Put the two together and create packages to sell. 

 

But as an ethical company PA Media, even though they own Alamy, have to pay a realistic market fee for Alamy images and that's all there is to it. 

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11 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

More generally this combination idea is excellent. PA Media has 1000 journalists, Alamy as 300 million images. Put the two together and create packages to sell. 

 

But as an ethical company PA Media, even though they own Alamy, have to pay a realistic market fee for Alamy images and that's all there is to it. 

Their behaviour makes me wonder about their ethics...

Phil

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James West, co-founder of Alamy, said:

“PA Media Group is a natural home for Alamy. As well as having one of the UK’s most comprehensive photo archives, PA shares our ethos of integrity and quality, and has an excellent reputation built over 150 years.

“Alamy can look forward to a fantastic future as part of the PA Media Group.”

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1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

James West, co-founder of Alamy, said:

PA shares our ethos of integrity and quality, and has an excellent reputation built over 150 years.

 

Unfortunately I no longer believe this.

They either lied to us, or, backtracked on a statement about not taking more commission; Both/either is totally unethical and unacceptable behaviour.

Then they sell licences at ridiculously low fees devaluing us and our work, further reinforcing the image of a company with poor ethics and little integrity.

 

Phil

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I can understand the frustration. On reflection I prefer to think that at the time when the Xmas video was made that was the situation and there were no plans for commission change, and that the order subsequently came from higher up the command chain - from the PA Board. 

 

I intend to hold PA to an expectation of high standards and integrity.

Edited by geogphotos
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I found an image being used in an article and distributed by a wire service, which was not as per the licence. Agency not interested. I emailed all the end users I could find, including national UK newspapers and just one had the decency to reply, apologise, and promise to check sources more carefully; that was a small Nigerian outfit.
 

I want out and I have stopped uploading images. At 5 cents at time I will need 140 cleared sales before my next $50 threshold and at the current rate I will likely have died from old age by then.

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18 minutes ago, Roy Conchie said:

I've just found an image of mine attributed as being sourced via 'Shutterstock'.  Does anyone have experience of PA/Alamy having a distribution agreement with Shutterstock?

 

Not that I have heard of.  Do you have any history with Shutterstock?  It could be just an error in crediting the photo, by the user.  Improper credits are far too common.

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5 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

Not that I have heard of.  Do you have any history with Shutterstock?  It could be just an error in crediting the photo, by the user.  Improper credits are far too common.

Thanks Michael,  maybe you're correct about the credit being wrongly attributed.  I hadn't thought of that.  I've flagged it with Alamy for an explanation so that could possibly be it.  Just wondered whether anyone else had seen Alamy content within Shutterstock.  Quite a few years back I submitted some images to Shutterstock for review but I was turned down.  

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Ethics, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  One person’s ethics is another's sin.  (Poor translation from Plato).  In addition, we are not “Partners”with Alamy or PA.  We are suppliers.  We have a contractual and economic relationship that is all. The only “power” an individual contributor has is to cease the contractual relationship.   Overall I think Alamy is a good company, certainly compared with almost every other stock photography organisation.  But, at the end of the day we are no different to an individual farm milk supplier to Sainsbury.  It may be argued as Marx did, that it is important not to enter the process of reification, at the risk of simplification, mistaking an economic contract for a social relationship in order to justify that unequal economic power and exchange.

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3 hours ago, IanDavidson said:

 The only “power” an individual contributor has is to cease the contractual relationship.   

 

We also have to "Power" to make Alamy respect said contractual relationship, as we saw when they tried to exclude certain licences from level calculations in contradiction to the agreement

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On 13/08/2022 at 18:09, IanDavidson said:

The only “power” an individual contributor has is to cease the contractual relationship.

Or to swap their images to non-exclusive and upload them elsewhere too.

 

On 13/08/2022 at 18:09, IanDavidson said:

In addition, we are not “Partners”with Alamy or PA.  We are suppliers.  We have a contractual and economic relationship that is all.

 

Legally that's certainly true. But the "best" companies (in which I'd include Alamy in the early days) encourage a feeling" of partnership because they know by working more closely with their suppliers the end result is improved. You only have to look at the huge number of unsaleable images in Alamy's collection to realise there's scope for improvement.

 

Mark

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James A made it clear that he completely understood my concerns and I feel 'heard' by Alamy.

 

I would not expect to get that type of personal and helpful response from other agencies I can think of.

 

So, I don't see any problem in making our views known and expecting a some degree of personailsed response from Alamy as and when appropriate.

 

I'd also like to onece again publicly praise how helpful and pleasant the Contributor Relations team is.

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On 13/08/2022 at 12:22, Roy Conchie said:

Thanks Michael,  maybe you're correct about the credit being wrongly attributed.  I hadn't thought of that.  I've flagged it with Alamy for an explanation so that could possibly be it.  Just wondered whether anyone else had seen Alamy content within Shutterstock.  Quite a few years back I submitted some images to Shutterstock for review but I was turned down.  

 

One of my first sales on here was attributed to my name/Getty. Never used getty so I put it down to either an error or some kind of distribution agreement. I got the sale and the money so didn't see the point in bothering further.

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