Life.com contest, will this make contributors happy?
At first I was surprised to learn that a respected company like Life.com would pair up with a less than respectable micro-stock agency like iStock for a photo contest. But then I remembered that Life’s images are actually owned by Getty. Is Getty under the impression that a photo contest will some how soothe contributors who are still upset by the massive royalties cuts, lack of payment for licensing of images, and security that was so lack it allowed $1,000’s of dollars in fraudulent purchases before being stopped to happen twice? Makes the theme of “Togetherness” seem ironic now doesn’t it?
The terms of the contest are interesting. The contest is only open to iStock photo contributors. According to the iStock forums images can be anything that is on iStock, Getty, Photobucket or Flickr but they can not be on other stock sites. This means that independent photographers will have to create new works just for the contest, while exclusives can just pick from existing work that has already sold.
In addition to this iStock and Life.com have included the standard “we can use it in anything, and for anything and we don’t have to pay you” clause. The one difference is that this clause is not just for the winning image but for any image that is submitted as part of the contest.
This is likely to cause more upset than help the already hurting reputation of what used to be a great company, the only real question is will this hurt Life’s reputation as well.
Notes
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azurelaroux liked this
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bobbigmac reblogged this from azurelaroux and added:
Pretty ridiculous competition… Yet another fucking ridiculous rights-grab preying...people...
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azurelaroux posted this
