student paper 'won't let us' own our photos.
Jacques-Jean Tiziou
about legal stuff.
I'm a photographer with the Daily Pennsylvanian at the University of
Pennsylvania. My photo editor and I have been trying to convince our
editorial board that our photogs do indeed own their images, and can do
with them as they please. I believe that we're in the right here,
although if I'm wrong let me know. I would appretiate any leads on getting
hardcopies of applicable laws, as well as copies of your publications'
official policies regarding image ownership for non staff photographers.
Details:
Our photographers are all students. We don't get paid. We haven't signed
any agreements giving over the rights to our images.
The paper does provide us with film, and often equippment.
We occasionally get requests for photo sales, such as athletes' parents
wanting shots of their kids, etc. The paper currently insists on a)taking
fifty percent of the sale, and b) only allowing the sale of images that
have run in print.
The way things currently work: All negs are stored in binders at the
office, and sometimes unpublished images are scanned later as file photos.
Occasionally negs get lost.
Issues:
I've been told that regardless of who provides the film and gear, we own
the rights to the image unless we specifically sign them away. It only
seems fair that we should be able to make some money off of our shots when
we have the chance; after all, my grades are suffering a -lot- because I
work twenty hours a week in addition to devoting a lot of time to the
paper.
The editorial board is -extremely- hesitant to change. In addition, they
don't believe that we own our pictures. This is where help with
applicable laws would be lovely. Their other argument that I've heard is
that somehow it wouldn't be "fair" for us to make the occasional buck
while the reporters never sell their stories. This is pretty lame.
In addition to proving to them that we -do- own our images, I would love
some suggestions as to how to work things out so that it works for both
photographers and the paper. If we take our negs after the paper scans
the one that's running, then we leave the paper without file photos. If
we leave them there, then we run the risk of evetually losing a negative.
If we only take the negs that we we might actually reuse ourselves or
sell, then we leave the paper with a hell of a problem tracking what
negatives are where.. and we run into problems when the paper needs
something shot more than a year ago, with people graduating all the time.
We don't have the resources to scan and archive everything. Someone
suggested that maybe if we want to take a sheet of negatives, we should
scan all the negs and leave them on a zip disk, so that an archive would
exist of everything that's missing from the binders.
If you think that a written photographer agreement should be in effect,
how should we write it up?
Thanks for bearing with me.. all feedback would be appreciated; I'm
especially curious as to how this issue is addressed at other student
publications.
Thanks, and take care.
-jj