Guest Felix Oscar Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 Alamy PLEASE - contributors need a category for people that are completely and absolutely unidentifiable. e.g. most silhouettes, body parts etc etc. Surely this must be long overdue - we all respect the various legal implications of people in images but if they are totally unidentifiable it is just ridiculous and of course alters the usage and potentially the chance to sell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Gaffen Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 This would also include people who are in the distant background, e.g. so far away from the camera, that they are impossible to identify. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 I suspect the problem Alamy have is that they may be completely un-identifiable in the image, but if that image is then used for a commercial use, say an advert, and someone comes forward and says "That is me in the background" and either demands a fee, or threatens to sue, then actually it would cause a lot of hassle, which is why I think the rules need to be so very strict... Kumar sriskandan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Felix Oscar Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 Hi Kumar, I can see for example a number of silhouettes where no one would ever be able to (genuinely) claim it is them. As a spurious claim maybe - but genuinely never. You can't demand a fee if you can't be identified. If Alamy are concerned about being sued - perhaps someone could explain why there are around 600,000 images with people in for sale RF - that (amazingly) don't have a model release. Sorry for the off topic but just an example of where they perhaps should be concerned about legality and being sued. I presume it is a case of wrongly/badly annotated images. And that is really the point if everyone annotates honestly and genuinely (we all make errors sometimes!) then unidentifiable people would not be problem. Caution is often healthy but this needs changing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Azure-images Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 They're up as RF because they're incorrectly annotated. We probably all have a few from the early days. Alamy trawl through slowly and occasionally notify corrections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Felix Oscar Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 Azure Images - yes of course I have read it and understand it very well. My point was that whilst Alamy (rightly) is hot on RF images having model releases - around 600,000 don't and seemingly nothing is done about it. Whilst at the same time some members have commented on being "hauled over the coals" for an image having a tiny unidentified person somewhere in the back of the image - that nobody could ever identify in a million years. It just seems a very strange order of priorities. All the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Semmick Photo Posted June 1, 2013 Share Posted June 1, 2013 I agree with the OP. This whole model release thing is applied too strict. There is no judge in court that would agree with someone saying the pixel in the background is him. I know in the Netherlands, if I recall correctly, if the person is not recognisable in a commercially used image, they have no leg to stand on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jools Elliott Posted June 1, 2013 Share Posted June 1, 2013 +1 with Semmick and OP. I think it has become too much of people trying to sue for no reason. Could you really identify a pixel? Could you really identify a shadow etc? Nope. It is being over-cautious and the likelyhood Alamy/ photographer would be sued is not going to happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alamy Posted June 7, 2013 Share Posted June 7, 2013 We've taken professional legal advice on this now and in the past and 'Doc' (above) sums the situation up rather nicely. However, we should point out that we ask the question regarding whether there are people in the picture as much to determine whether there are '0 people' for search purposes as to cover any legal implications. For example, if a customer searches for a beach with '0 people' they want no people at all regardless of whether they are identifiable or not. Asking photographers to decide if someone is 'identifiable' or not would lead to massive inconsistencies which would be reflected in poor search results. Therefore we feel it is much more effective to ask 'how many people are in this image?' and we can then use this information in a number of ways and a customer can decide how identifiable a person is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizair Posted June 7, 2013 Share Posted June 7, 2013 I agree that it has to remain up to the publisher as to whether an image can legally be used. After all, only publishers know what they want the image for. The main difficulty I see is the distinction between RF and RM. I sense a view by some contributors that RF is a better way to sell images. Other agencies handle RF differently, eg. Listing an RF image as editorial use only. On the other hand, why should any agency follow what others are doing? Who knows whether these other agencies have it right? The turmoil out there at the moment seems to indicate that many don't. As long as the conditions of sale are clear to a buyer, then best to leave what works continue to work, and accept that there "may" be a more lucrative way. But if unacceptable additional risk is attached to a change, then sound risk management principles dictate that such a change should not be implemented. As many companies throughout history have found to their peril. Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted June 12, 2013 Share Posted June 12, 2013 I do understand the legal need for releases or indication that none is available. What I'm concerned about again is from the buyer's point of view. If they do a search specifying e.g. 2 people, they are surely expecting the two people to be pretty prominent in the image. They don't expect to see a photo which apparently has no people, but we had to indicate had two people because they are little pixel blurs somewhere in the background. That must be extremely annoying, not to mention adverserly affecting out CTR. Can anyone from Alamy inform me as a statistical fact whether I'll lose more potential sales though cloining the blurs out and indicating that the photo has been altered (thus losing possible sales to buyers who want unaltered images) or keeping them in and hacking off buyers who actually wanted to see people. Often that sort of editorial photo often also has unreleased property, but I still think that if a buyer indicates a specific number of people, s/he wants to be able to see the people clearly. Added: for goodness sake. I tried to post this and got an error message: "Your post contains the following suspected spam word, T*E*L", which might be a typo but the only one 'find' can find is in the word 't-e-l-l- which I changed to 'inform' in the paragraph above. Finally, the one time Alamy changed the number of people indicated on my files, they made the number lower than the guidelines I followed would suggest. At the same time, there are images from e.g. outdoor performances with hundreds of people in the performance and audience, many recogniseable, being sold as RF with model releases indicated as available and I'd bet my bottom dollar that they're NOT available, and even in the impossible event they were, that the tog can match them up with the individual who say, "I'm in the photo, I'll sue". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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