Web use of images and DACS

[Reimar]

I'm sure this has been discussed, but I couldn't find anything by searching here.  Web uses of images seem to be endless now.  I'm up to more than 100 for the last two years (I missed 2022 last year), and I'm getting tired.

My question is: is this actually useful?  I'm assuming that since DACS asks for web usage, it's taken into account. 

I doubt anyone has empirical evidence, but does anyone have an in at DACS with someone in the know, with some advice?

[geogphotos]

My understanding is that to attract any money the web use has to be recorded by a CLA licence holder.

 

If it is a very popular website ( BBC for example) even though it uses tens of thousands of images, and lots of CLA users list it,  the payout per image will be miniscule or even zero. 

 

On the other hand if a website is well listed by CLA users but has very few photos claiming from it then the payout will be much larger per image.

 

Though knowing this doesn't really help much! 🙃 

 

Maybe look for more obscure, specialist websites rather than just mass market magazines etc

Edited January 26 by geogphotos

[Reimar]

From the CLA site: "A CLA Copyright Licence is required if any of your staff make copies from any of the 16 million-plus print or online publications that CLA represents".

 

I guess I'll just keep going with a couple of hundred websites and leave it at that.  Oddly, last year I missed the Part 1 entirely, and got the biggest payout from DACS by a large margin.  Go figure.

[geogphotos]

That is all we can do - put in as much effort as we can and hope for the best.

 

It is, in theory, a fairer system than before but even so it is very a much a lottery hoping to find a lucky match.

 

I have done well the last two years but am very aware that any year it could just collapse. 

[John Mitchell]

4 hours ago, Reimar said:

From the CLA site: "A CLA Copyright Licence is required if any of your staff make copies from any of the 16 million-plus print or online publications that CLA represents".

 

I guess I'll just keep going with a couple of hundred websites and leave it at that.  Oddly, last year I missed the Part 1 entirely, and got the biggest payout from DACS by a large margin.  Go figure.

 

Have to admit that I put very little time into searching for Web uses. Seems a lot of effort for little gain. My DACS payments stay roughly the same every year no matter what I do. There doesn't appear to be much rhyme or reason to the whole process.

[AlexH]

On 26/01/2024 at 14:05, Reimar said:

Oddly, last year I missed the Part 1 entirely, and got the biggest payout from DACS by a large margin.  Go figure.

I think if you 'miss' completing part 1 Dacs just process your claim with the previous years details. So given it's usually just a case of a little updating it probably isn't surprising if it makes little difference to an individual claim.

[Marianne]

@AlexH Yes it says Part 1 isn't necessary, but you have to complete Part 2 to make a claim. I spent so much time searching for web uses because I had a lot more of them this year but I didn't know that you had to have CLA approved websites. How do you check if a website is CLA approved?

 

I spent so much time just trying to find the Alamy ones & also searching for all my Alamy zoomed images, including the ones from 2022 that I hadn't been able to find in the past, but realized that given that websites are now allowed, I should be searching for images licensed from other sites. In the past I've found plenty of books licensed from places other than Alamy with Amazon UK and Google books searches, which is why I do DACS myself, but I'm sure I'd find hundreds of additional websites if I did a google lens/tineye search of my non-Alamy best-sellers but it would take forever to search them all. Since so many places either don't attribute the images or attribute them only to the site, it's a never-ending search. 

 

My DACS hasn't gone up appreciably since adding websites, but last year I found one (US) book use Alamy hadn't billed and got a $250 infringement from that - I look at the time I spend searching for DACS as a way to check for such uses too. But it's still an awful lot of work.

 

So, does anyone know how you check if the website is CLA approved? Do newspaper websites count? The sites I've listed in the past haven't been removed from my Part 1, and they are all UK sites, so I'm hoping it hasn't been a complete waste of time. Too late now to check since I already hit "submit" last night, but I'd be interested to know how to check in the future. Thanks.

Edited February 16 by Marianne

[geogphotos]

UK newspapers don't count though you can enter anything with a domain name in Part1 - you just won't get any money from sites that are not eligible. You can enter Alamy if you like and all your images! 

 

It really is a fairly hopeless task because there are billions of websites. And if you list ones that are very popular ( BBC, major magazines) then so will lots of other photographers. Probably the best ones to list are specialist ones such as business and financial sites, perhaps some to do with education - what I mean is to try to narrow done who is likely to buy a CLA licence and what sort of sites are they going to 1) visit as part of their work/study 2) list on an official form.

 

What we want is a site that lots of CLA licence holders use and few photographers list! 

Edited February 16 by geogphotos

[John Mitchell]

I submitted Part 1 today. Managed to find a few new books, but I've basically given up on looking for UK mag uses and websites. No big deal really as my DACS payments are not large, and they don't vary much from year to year. I kinda wish now that I had let Alamy do the work. However, I guess that ship has sailed. 🚢

 

 

Edited February 16 by John Mitchell