Yahoo's Flickr site has deepened its relationship with photo-licensing power Getty Images so photographers can nominate their own photos for inclusion in Getty's Flickr Collection.
Previously, Getty decided which images it believed were commercially viable, and since the program launched in July 2008, it has put together a collection of more than 60,000 commercial images. Now photographers, instead of just being able to indicate that they're willing to be contacted by Getty, can actively submit a portfolio of images.
"A submission should include exactly 10 images that represent what you consider to be the best of your work. The Getty Images creative team will evaluate submissions based on style, subject matter, and technical skill," Andy Saunders, Getty's vice president of creative imagery, said in a statement. "If some or all of the photos--or other images from your photostream--are selected for the Flickr Collection on Getty Images, you will receive an invitation via FlickrMail. This invitation will clearly show Getty Images' initial selection of images and introduce the enrollment process."
The partnership is an interesting confluence between the old-school world of stock photography and the nouveau era of digital photography and the Internet. With digital SLRs and the Internet, high-quality photos are easier to come by, leading to the arrival of several "microstock" companies that sell photos on a royalty-free and relatively inexpensive basis. It's hurt professional stock photographers, but it's provided extra income to any number of enthusiasts and amateurs.
Flickr never launched its own microstock site, despite an abundance of enthusiasts contributing photos, but the Getty partnership does mix a commercial ingredient into the Yahoo photo-sharing site's operations.
The easy availability of photos at Flickr and other sites can lead to copyright infringement troubles. On Tuesday, Toyota USA apologized for using Flickr photos without permission:
Toyota apologizes for pulling images from Flickr without photographer permission. Images from a handful of photographers appeared on a Toyota site for five days. We're working quickly to reach out to the individual photographers involved. Until then, the images have been removed, and corrections have been made to the process of pulling images from Flickr.
So it's clear that some Flickr photos have business value, whether for their professional quality or their everyman snapshot flavor.
Getty and Flickr won't disclose any details about their business relationship, but here's what Flickr has to say about how the finances work for photographers:
Flickr has a business relationship with Getty Images, though we've never publicly discussed the specifics of the deal. Regarding the photographers, Getty Images will be the exclusive distributor of select Flickr members' content, and in turn, Getty Images will facilitate the license of such photography and will pay the royalties directly to the members. This will be a direct relationship between Getty Images and each Flickr contributor.
Flickr photographers will be asked to sign a Getty Images contributor contract, if they agree to have their images licensed for commercial use, that will specify rates for rights-managed and royalty-free royalties, as applicable. Rates for royalty-free imagery are 20 percent; rates for rights-managed (images) are 30 percent. These are directly in line with royalty rates that (Getty's) existing contributors receive.
In an effort to keep people from incorrectly reusing or repurposing images found on its image search tool, Google has added new options that let users filter results by usage rights. Users can now filter photos by whether they're available for reuse, commercial reuse, reuse with modification, or commercial use with modification.
Google is including a variety of licensing methods including Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation license, and items that are in the public domain. Its system for determining the rights on various shots is not foolproof though, and as such the company is recommending that those who are interested in republishing or reworking any of the images check with the content owner first (if possible).
Users can now choose one of four license filters for images on Google image search.
(Credit: CNET)What's likely to be a long-term effect of supporting license filtering is that Google's image index becomes far larger than it is right now. Some content owners who have chosen to block its indexing to keep others from easily reusing their photos may think twice; with these new filters there's at least some semblance of care and control, even if Google is basing that off information from a photo's metadata.
It's also a signal that Google is paying more attention to the rights of user content, although the filtering is still something that's tucked away in the advanced settings of the search tool, and not something users have to check off before even beginning a new search.
Google has not yet rolled out license filtering to any of its other properties. Sites like Google Books and Video could be next. In the meantime, there are several search tools that let users quickly seek out images that can be reused and remixed including the Creative Commons search engine, Flickr, Blip.tv, ArtistServer, The Internet Archive, Wikihow, and Wikipedia.
As expected, iStockphoto launched its audio clip licensing service, called iStockaudio, on Wednesday.
The move marks another expansion for a site that pioneered the "microstock" business of inexpensive, royalty-free image licensing over the Internet. The company, acquired by stock art power Getty Images in 2006, also offers video, Flash animations, and vector illustrations.
iStock Chief Executive Bruce Livingstone announced the availability of the audio licensing Wednesday in a blog posting. The company has been accumulating audio clips over the last year, and now 10,000 are available.
"You can use our iStock tracks as many times as you like, wherever you like," Livingstone said. "Our tracks include public performance, synchronization, and mechanical licenses."
That means there are constraints on audio contributors, though, who may not be members of various professional organizations.
"iStockphoto has used reasonable efforts to ensure that the suppliers of audio content are not members of any performing rights, mechanical rights or any other similar societies (such as SOCAN, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, PRS, MCPS, SACEM, SDRM, JASLAC, GEMA, etc.) and that no performing rights or other royalties are required to be paid to any such organizations," according to the iStockaudio license agreement.
When a customer licenses an audio clip--the noise of smashing glass or a background melody, for example--the company shares a percentage of the revenue with the contributor of the clip. Licensing fees range from 2 credits for a basic, simple clip to 25 credits for a long, elaborate one; credit costs range from $18 for 12 to $1,900 for 2,000.
Facebook has announced modifications to its developer application programming interface so that the creators of third-party applications can restrict their reach by demographic--more specifically, by age or location.
The update is designed to help developers who may run into legal issues if they make their applications available to all Facebook users, regardless of how old they are or what countries they live in.
This could apply, for example, to promotional applications created by liquor companies that need to restrict access to those over 21 in the United States, or to game makers that have only been licensed in certain countries. We've seen this already with the two versions of board game Scrabble on Facebook: one created on behalf of Hasbro, which licenses the game in the U.S. and Canada, and one by Mattel, which publishes it overseas.
The new demographic restrictions in the API use Facebook profile data to determine age and location, and profile data is not always totally accurate. As a result, the social network recommends that developers also ask up-front about those details.
"You can and should consider implementing additional consent or confirmation in your application, as appropriate," a post on Facebook's developer blog by engineer Nick Gianos read. "For example, if, for legal reasons, your application requires the user to affirm that they are of a certain age or are in a certain location, you should continue to solicit that explicit affirmation, and not regard the fact that the user passed through the Demographic Restrictions as equivalent."
The Affero General Public License, a new variation of the seminal General Public License (GPL) specifically for one situation the regular GPL doesn't address, is now final.
The Affero GPL contains a provision specifically for situations when software it governs is accessible as a service over a network. Where the GPL treats that situation as a private use of software, permitting the user to keep any changes private, the Affero GPL lets programmers include a requirement that users of the software must be able to download it when it's offered as a network service.
The Free Software Foundation, the organization founded by Richard Stallman in the 1980s to bypass the proprietary constraints of the traditional software world, published the new software license Monday after releasing draft versions earlier this year.
The Affero GPL license is increasingly relevant as companies such as Google employ customized open-source software to run massive online businesses with no requirement for sharing. However, intellectual property attorney Eben Moglen, who helped craft GPLv3, said other pressure can be brought to bear if companies take advantage of GPL software without reciprocating.
"If you want to protect your business model, you must be model citizens of the environment. If you shrink, political pressure will grow to constrain your rights to secure the rights of everyone else," Moglen said in May. "Upon the behavior of Google much depends."
The FSF had contemplated adding that feature of the Affero GPL to the new version 3 of the GPL, but chose instead to release the separate license. Adding yet another license to the profusion already available to free and open-source programmers complicates licensing choices somewhat, but the FSF said that code written under the GPL and Affero GPL may be combined in some circumstances
The FSF's Affero announcement is here, and a set of frequently asked questions on the GPL is here.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
It's a common problem: your point-and-shoot camera's microphone picked up nothing but wind while you were at the park shooting a video of people flying kites. The solution? Wipe over the track with music. But putting licensed music over the videos not only requires video editing software, but also the digital rights to publish. YouTube has rolled out a new service called AudioSwap which hopes to quell both of those problems.
To use AudioSwap, just pick a video you've uploaded and browse the provided audio list. You'll get a preview right away, and with the click of a button YouTube will start processing the request. I found with my test video it only took about 30 seconds to show up with the new music, which is far sooner than it would take to manually add music and re-export it in a video editing program.
It will be interesting to see whether YouTube ventures into a paid-for license model, to add new and popular music tracks to videos for a small fee.
[via Mashable]
(Credit:
Acme.com / CNET Networks)
Most people don't go out driving to make friends, but that's the philosophy behind a new (and extremely optimistic) social networking SMS service called PL8Scan, which enables cell phone-wielding drivers to contact other drivers by text message via the latter's license plate numbers.
Having signed up to PL8Scan, drivers who wish to initiate contact with other road users send a text message to a central repository using a five-digit number. In the message, the driver includes the license plate number of the intended recipient (including details of the state in which it is registered), as well as the substance of the message. In most cases, this will be the end of the story.
However, on the remarkably slim chance the recipient is also a signed-up member of PL8Scan and has agreed to have his or her messages forwarded on by text message, the communication gets through to its intended target. The sample message that PL8Scan provides is. "Hey BLUEBUG ...what party are you going to?" Presumably, the ideal outcome involves BLUEBUG text-messaging a response, and the original sender being invited to the party. (Users can also check their PL8 messages online.)
Call me a pessimistic old scrooge, but I'm skeptical about this ever working in practice. Even in cases in which both sender and recipient are PL8Scan members, we suspect there is little chance for highway friendship to flourish: by the time you have grabbed your phone, punched in a message, sent it via the central server, and waited for it to be read by BLUEBUG, the traffic will likely have moved on. Those looking for digital friendships out of doors might have better luck getting hold of a Microsoft Zune and cruising around looking for someone to be social with.
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