Behind the Scenes: Sotomayor and Photographers

NYT ^ | July 15, 2009, 3:11 | David W. Dunlap

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In an era when slides and negatives are no longer the coin of the realm, the case of Usher v. Corbis-Sygma may seem to have lost much timeliness. Except for this: one member of the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals that most recently heard the case was Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

The portfolio included photographs Mr. Usher had taken during the 2000 presidential campaign.

“The value of these images is certainly more than $7 each,” Mr. Usher, 47, said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Alexandria, Va., where he lives. “But I’d so much rather have the images back [that] Judge Sotomayor did not get that is blatantly absurd: to treat one of the top photojournalists in the world as if he was a child who lost the snapshots he’d brought into CVS”

“She displayed absolutely no empathy or compassion for an individual who’d won his case against the world’s richest man by upholding an award to him in the exact same amount of money that a six-year-old would have gotten from Walmart or Walgreens merely for asking. The judge did not understand the uniqueness of the images and their historical significance and that they were unrecreatable.”

Why is the Usher case important? Because [i]t will affect how photographs are valued in future cases. And that affects every single photographer out there.

This ruling means that from now on, any agency, any magazine, any publisher will never have to worry about losing your photographs, since it will cost them peanuts to pay you back. It will be cheaper for them to trash them than to return them to you.

As for Mr. Usher, he said he was heading to Capitol Hill on assignment Wednesday. “But not shooting the Sotomayor hearing, ironically.”

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Empathy.

Would a wise hispanic woman have gotten a fair value, or $7?

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Ping, and thanks for the head’s up.

[jwparkerjr]

Not passing judgment on the situation, and certainly not taking sides, but every publication I've ever dealt with made it abundantly clear in their guidelines for submissions that their liability is limited when it comes to the well-being of the photos submitted. Usually goes on to state that they will pay for the unexposed film, and nothing more.

Of course there could be a whole lot more to the case than this, but it's safe to assume when you submit your work that you are going to get the short end of the stick. You can avoid that by agreement in advance sometimes, but as a rule the publisher is in the driver's seat. News photos are timely and that means you don't have a lot leeway to dicker with them lest your photos become old news.

There are few professions that put the professional at as great a disadvantage as photography. A few of the really good ones can demand, and get, what they want. The rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.

One needs to read VERY carefully the guidelines for submission.

[Califreak]

http://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/jamesedwards/2009/05/26/sotomayor-hates-white-people/

[a fool in paradise]

While acknowledging that individual images might command higher prices in the future, Mr. Fairhurst said that assigning value to them in advance would be a gamble, not unlike “going to the ponies.” He said that the courts had to take into account the actual earnings to date. “If what you have is 200,000 images, one of which is worth $10,000 and the rest are worth zero, you get $10,000,” he said.

So your possessions have no value until they are sold. What's the point of insurance then?

PS, it was Bill Gates' Corbis that singled out Free Republic among all of the websites to give a cease and desist order to keep FReepers from displaying the genuine Kerry-Fonda Vietnam protest rally photo.

FR never hosted the image, it was URL referencing to other places.

[Palladin]

No empathy for photographers.

She’s a tough broad.

[a fool in paradise]

Corbis is an agency. They handle the online storage and licensing of photographers’ images.

Since it is Bill Gates, his lawyers may have a statement that says “we are not responsible if...”

Try putting that sign up in front of your house and refuse to clear the ice off your sidewalk.

Not every clause will hold up in court and lawyers know this. They put them there so you have to go to court to challenge them.

[a fool in paradise]

Old “news” photos become “history”.

Time-Life and some of the record labels (Columbia I think) are now digging through their archives claiming “work for hire” to sell high dollar prints of previously unpublished shots from famous events/photoshoots.

Except as the comic book world already has established in court, those “work for hire” contracts aren’t perpetually binding in the entertainment world. A number of comic artist/writer creators were able to apply for ownership of their works 50 years after the date of creation.