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Dont steal my photo but I will steal your music


12 years 3 months ago #190413 by photobod
We rant and rave about people stealing our images but how many of us steal music to put to our slide shows, below is an article on PDN (photo distric news).

A wedding photographer's run-in with a rock band for unauthorized use of a popular song on a client's wedding video has cast a spotlight on a practice that makes photographers squirm: their violation of other artists' copyrights.

ABC news reported that a video from the wedding of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and TV journalist/beauty queen Candice Crawford suddenly disappeared from YouTube after going viral. According to ABC, the video featured Coldplay's song "Fix You" as theme music. The photographer--Joe Simon of Austin, Texas--reportedly settled for an undisclosed amount to avoid a lawsuit for unauthorized use of the music.

But Simon is by no means the only photographer to synchronize copyrighted music to a wedding video or slide show without permission. With no easy or affordable way to clear rights with copyright owners, and only a small risk of getting caught (unless the video goes viral), a lot of wedding photographers are breaking copyright law.

"Photographers are using main stream music more and more and it's a pretty polarizing conversation," says wedding photographer David Jay. "Some photographers really feel passionately about it and think of it as 'stealing' while some artists want to pay but can't and others see it as one artist helping another artist promote what they do."

"It's an issue [wedding photographers] have been concerned about. It came up in a workshop we taught in 2007, and the conversation is accelerating," says photographer Andrew Niesen. He says many photographers want to be in good standing with other copyright holders.

"A lot of photographers are using music out of license due to ignorance. They don't know how to pursue a license," says Rachel LaCour Niesen, who is Andrew Niesen's wife and business partner.

Jay says wedding photographers simply find music licensing too difficult.

"It's nearly impossible and I've never heard of a wedding photographer successfully being able to license a mainstream song for synchronized use," he says. "I've spent a long time trying to make it possible. Photographers want to pay a reasonable fee to use the music so when they can't they'll just do it anyway."

The problem, Jay explains, is that you have to get a license from three or four different people, including the lyricist, the composer, and the recording artist and/or their record company. While rights licensing organizations such as ASCAP and BMI make it easy to license music for broadcast, they don't offer synchronization licenses for "small" users like wedding photographers.

"For something little like that, they wouldn't give you the time of day," says Nancy Wolff, an intellectual property attorney with Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard in New York.

Trade associations for wedding photographers are silent on the matter. Professional Photographers of America and the Wedding Photojournalist Association did not respond to requests for comment.

Niesen and Lacour have tried to solve the licensing problem on their own by paying about $1,000 per year to ASCAP and BMI for licenses the photographers describe as "experimental." The licenses allow them to use any songs in the ASCAP and BMI repertoires, under certain conditions and limits.

"That gives you access to 90 percent of the songs out there," Andrew Niesen says. But they have to keep track of (and report) the downloads of each song, to make sure they don't exceed the play limit.

"We worked pretty hard to figure out what to do," he continues. "I think we're pretty well covered, but I always worry about whether we're correctly licensed with this thing. I know I'm doing more than a lot of photographers who grab a song and use it."

Another service Niesen and Lacour use is Triple Scoop Music, a licensing service representing up-and-coming artists that many other wedding photographers also use. The problem is that Triple Scoop (and other services like it) don't represent the rights holders of the most popular music, which is what most wedding clients want on their slideshows and videos.

"I want music that a couple connects to for a slide show," says another successful wedding photographer who admits she uses music illegally--and doesn't want her name used because of that. She praises Triple Scoop--"great selection, a ton of variety," she says. And she uses it to license music for any slide shows she displays in public.

But for slide shows she makes for her clients, an unfamiliar song from a service like Triple Scoop, she says, "isn't the same as using the music they played at their wedding," she explains. "I want to use a soundtrack that will transport them back to their wedding. I can't trigger that memory with generic music, no matter how good it is."

"It's ironic," she continues. "We [photographers] are so 'don't steal my images,' but we'll steal your music. That's the worst part of it."

To assuage her sense of guilt, she doesn't charge clients for slide shows. She provides them to clients as "a gift," separate from the wedding package items that she charges clients a fee for.

David Jay compares using music without permission on a DVD or video meant a client's private use to driving 60 mph in 55 mph speed zone: hardly anybody gets in trouble for the violation.

"I personally don't think it's illegal to use the music and until a judge or jury makes a ruling that it is in this specific type of case I'll probably continue to be OK with photographers doing it."

Wolff emphasizes that there is "no exemption for personal use" that makes it legal for wedding photographers to use copyrighted music without permission. "If you're doing a slide show, you should get a license."

But she also says that if a slide show is shared only among family and friends, the rights holder is unlikely to ever find out.

Videos and slideshows posted on YouTube (by the photographer or the client) pose more of a risk for the photographer because music rights holders are able to scour YouTube with music recognition software for illegal uses, Wolff says. "If they see it, they tell you to take it down. But they're probably not going to sue you."

She speaks from some experience. Wolff represents PACA, the trade associations for stock photo agencies. Someone posted on YouTube a video shot at a PACA event showing members dancing. The owners of the music playing in the background found the video online--and sent a takedown notice.

let me know what you think.
www.dcimages.org.uk
"A good photograph is one that communicate a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective." - Irving Penn
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12 years 3 months ago #190417 by icepics
I read this somewhere too, probably on PDN. Interesting, this sort of parallels the thread Baydream started. It's one thing if you shoot some video of an event and there happens to be music in the background, but if you use music on your own website, then you probably need to pay for it (unless it's public domain). You're basically using what someone else created using their time and talent.
Sharon
Photo Comments
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12 years 3 months ago #190420 by photobod

icepics wrote: I read this somewhere too, probably on PDN. Interesting, this sort of parallels the thread Baydream started. It's one thing if you shoot some video of an event and there happens to be music in the background, but if you use music on your own website, then you probably need to pay for it (unless it's public domain). You're basically using what someone else created using their time and talent.


Yeah I just read Johns thread and commented that they were on similar tracks. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
www.dcimages.org.uk
"A good photograph is one that communicate a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective." - Irving Penn
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12 years 3 months ago #190436 by mattmoran
I think this is much more clear-cut than the Miles Davis pixel art issue in the other thread. If you are going to sell a product that includes copyrighted recording, then you need the rights to the recording.

Of course that's easy for me to say since I'm not a professional wedding photographer. And I'm sure it would be difficult to get a license from a popular band like Coldplay to include their recording in your product. For most wedding photographers, it probably wouldn't even be worth their agent's time to answer your query. Let's say they wanted 99 cents for every copy of the show you sell. And you sell 5 of them. It's not even worth the agent's time.

It would be nice if the recording industry set up a mechanism to obtain license for things like that.
-Matt
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12 years 3 months ago #190439 by icepics
Good point, I was thinking more along the lines of buying an MP3 recording (which is what, $1 something on Amazon?). You're right a recording company isn't going to pursue usage at a local level. Maybe things going viral is where it can get noticed, otherwise companies are not going to track down every wedding photographer out there.
Sharon
Photo Comments
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12 years 3 months ago #190467 by rmeyer7
Also makes me think of photographers who get all up in arms about someone stealing their photos, which they edited in stolen/pirated copies of Photoshop and Lightroom...
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12 years 3 months ago #190468 by Henry Peach
I paid for Photoshop, and my website slide show music is from Triple Scoop. I wouldn't use pirated music not only because I wouldn't like to be treated that way myself, but I also have no interest in dealing with the legal repercussions no matter how unlikely. If the client wants to hear their favorite musicians when watching the slide show they can play their own music.
mattneedham.zenfolio.com
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12 years 3 months ago - 12 years 3 months ago #190690 by photobod

rmeyer7 wrote: Also makes me think of photographers who get all up in arms about someone stealing their photos, which they edited in stolen/pirated copies of Photoshop and Lightroom...


Such a very true comment.

My brother is a musician and he gets very irate if he comes across anyone talking about downloading music illegaly, he is very passionate about the industry and I dont blame him.

I guess it simply comes down if you don't pay for it you should not use it. ;)
www.dcimages.org.uk
"A good photograph is one that communicate a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective." - Irving Penn
,
12 years 3 months ago #191027 by Stealthy Ninja
ALL the music i use is royalty free.
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www.aevansphoto.com
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12 years 3 months ago #191176 by Tgauge9
Thanks for sharing. You make a good point. Us photographers are against those who steal our photos, but yet we do steal music either for a slide show as you mention or for our own website or simply downloading a song to listen too, instead of buying the CD.
The following user(s) said Thank You: photobod
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