More than a dozen of the photo agencies that supply celebrity snapshots from the paparazzi are banding together to withhold their prized product unless it can get additional compensation from People magazine, resulting in the postponement of its iPad app.
via Hollywood Reporter, thx Russell.
5 Comments
I’m watching this story with great interest.
Does digital distribution (via iPad) equal an additional kind of usage and should photographers be compensated for that extra use? I think they should.
It seems like Magazines want the additional circulation from iPad/tablet users without paying content providers anything extra. I’d be curious how the mags define “digital uses” in thier photographers contracts.
I would love see some commentary from Rob on this issue.
@Steven Noreyko,
Hollywood went through this awhile back with the writers strike. If you allow digital rights to escape early on it will become difficult to get them back down the road. Magazines are saying circ and advertising are down so the ipad simply makes up that deficit. Time to negotiate.
I agree with Steven that digital distribution via the iPad warrants additional compensation.
This critical area of usage needs to be nailed down early in the game.
Awesome this had to happen as some point! I hope other photographers follow suit. I see way to meny giving up the rights to there images way to easy.
I’m not sure, guys, but to me the iPad is interchangeable with the dead trees format. Should magazines and publishers simply not award fees based on total distribution? If you have 300,000 subscribers (I’m pulling this number out of the air) + 20,000 iPad subscribers, then you your total distribution is 320,000 and should be counted as such. If, in this case, your existing base of subscribers is getting a digital version(or a highly controlled digital version as regards the iPad) to complement an existing subscriber base, I don’t think that really constitutes an extra readership, and feels a little like double-dipping on the part of the photographic industry.
Though as Rob says, you need to set the ground-rules early for this sort of thing, I don’t really find my sympathies where I usually would in this instance.
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