First off, I wanted to say thanks for putting out some fairly balanced information, Matthew. In delving in to the VKT case, you've raised points I hadn't considered before and, as a photographer whose work is routinely found without license of permission all over the web, this has been a good lesson in perspective.
I'd also like to lend some of mine, if you will.
On one hand, he is obviously a victim if what he says is true that sleazy offshore companies are co-opting and pirating his images to generate traffic for their own gain. I have no doubt there are many such companies that lie OUTSIDE the U.S. that do such things. His claim has a ring of truth to them and I am willing to give VKT some benefit of the doubt on this.
I've had one particular image of my own picked up by quite a few wallpaper sites around the world and have put in a lot of work to get it removed from any site I find it on. It really has been a learning curve fraught with frustration at points and, at this juncture, I think I've manged to to scrub image files from about 60 ~ 70% of the sites that hosted them.
The remaining 30% are proving tricky, as they're seemingly way beyond any legal reach. Some of the sites are spyware bait, expecting you to download a file (for "sponsorship") before you can access the content - and a few more are sites that are hotlinking through to files which have been legitimately licensed by clients of mine. When these sites are operating outside the US and EU, it opens up a can of worms with regards to how to deal with these acts - which doesn't even factor for whether such a removal request will be honored, or if the site owner will simply laugh in my face and say "get lost" (it's usually more profane)
Still: a 70% reduction in proliferation is worth the effort. I'll keep plugging away to scrub as much of the remaining 30% as is humanly possible. This makes me think that VKT could be doing the same thing and, if he hasn't got the time to do so personally, I'm sure that he or HAN could employ someone to do the same thing.
Is it tiring? Yes. Tedious? Damn straight. Demoralizing? You bet... but nothing worth doing is ever easy, and for any shooter who is serious about protecting the value of their work, they need to be pro-active in ensuring that any unauthorised dissemination is nipped in the bud.
However, the rage he appears to be projecting on others is being wrongfully and recklessly redirected to innocent infringers within the U.S. The problem with VKT's extortion letters are that the amounts he is trying to extract from innocent infringers is too damned high, outrageous, and cannot be easily justified (except within his own vindictive and entitled mind). He is trying to "correct" wrongs done by others and outsiders by making innocent infringers pay for outsider infringements and piracies.
This is the point of divergence - what constitutes
innocence?
For the VKT issue, I can see that people who are not web, tech or legally savvy would look at something labelled "free" and think that may be genuinely the case - but I think the more apt question is "
Should this person / company have
known better?"
Most of the infringement claims I wind up referring to counsel are for entities which, in my opinion, should damn well have known better. I'm talking about people with journalism or media qualifications, businesses who are routinely in the habit of licensing content, corporations who should be performing due diligence before using material - and yes, even a few lawyers. That last one always surprises me.
As for innocence? That's something that can only be determined once both parties have laid out factual evidence and, unfortunately, that usually means going to court or, at least, court mandated mediation.
Most victims who come to ELI for help do not even question whether they should take down the image. They take them down immediately upon notification. Most are willing to make some kind of financial compensation for the infringement. However, the willingness to pay does not mean people have lost their minds either and get financially raped.
My personal experience runs a little contra to this: in instances where I've offered infringers the ability to retroactively license the images - for upper two or low three digit sums in the majority of instances - a good many responses have been less than pleasant, along with the inevitable stonewalling. I'm then left with a choice as to whether to drop the claim, or kick it up to counsel. It's never an easy choice.
And since we are discussing his public statement, he wants to believe any diminished income he is experiencing is entirely due to piracy. He, like many desperate artists and software developers, want to ASSUME that every person that infringed on his photo would have paid his fee to use them. That is a flawed argument. Some people would never have bought them at all. Hence, there would not have been any compensation anyway. I am not using that argument as a justification to piracy. However, from an economic calculation perspective, the calculation of losses are inflated and extremely flawed.
Savvy content creators are well aware that an individual act of piracy does not always equate to a lost sale, because that individual may well not have made the conscious choice to pay for the content instead. What most content creators agree on, though, is that piracy as a societal norm is the issue - the "I'm going to do it because everyone else is" claim.
I actually had a version of that discussion with an infringer once which was along the lines of "Hey, yeah, I took your shot from a Google image search - but do you know how many other sites are using it too?" (I did) "Why are you going after me and not them?" (I was)
It's clear that our laws need to play catch-up with our technologies if we're to make any headway in ensuring that both content creators and consumers get an equally fair shake.
Unsurprisingly, VKT like most photographers, are always bragging/spouting off about how much money they spend and invest in their businesses.
This is usually less to do with bragging than it is as a statement of the input time/knowledge/skills required to get the results... and it's usually aimed at the less-than-knowledgeable potential client who can't quite grasp why a shooter with a certain skill-set might be so costly to hire, or why they charge a premium for their prints or digital files.
If you want to talk about risking real money, trying signing your name to commercial real estate and engage in a storefront business such as retail store, hotels, motels, restaurants, dry cleaners, bars, etc. Or franchise owners of brand name businesses such as McDonald's, Burger Kings, other chain restaurants, and chain businesses where the entry fee is $100,000 or even higher. Or how about the landlording business as I am in. Don't talk to me about financial risk and capital investments. Most business owners would laugh at VKT's remarks because it sounds so pitiful and weak in comparison to other businesses.
I get where you're coming from with this statement, but it's a little apples-to-oranges. The risks faced by "bricks and mortar" business with tangible, physical product are different than those faced by content creators whose work can easily be shared around the world within the space of a few mouse clicks.
Most photographers have an entitlement mentality. They don't want to acknowledge the technology upheaval devastating their industry. Apparently, they can't see the glut of ever-improving smartphones and digital cameras being produced and sold each year to amateurs. Those amateurs have dumped out millions of additional images for far lower price points than the old-timers. Plus the fact, customers don't value imagery as much because there is so much to choose from. The supply of imagery far exceeds demand regardless of the piracy and infringement factor. They want to blame it all on piracy and innocent infringers who stupidly downloaded a few photographs and put it up on their website.
I disagree. When you go into business as a photographer - which is to say when you elect to pursue it as a career and your sole source of income - it's a different world. There
are some shooters who are quick to pin their lack of success and finances on everything else other than themselves, but the truth is that they haven't embraced the principles of what it takes to be successful in business.
a) You can provide a better quality product / significantly different product than your competition
b) You can provide a lower priced product than your competition
c) You can provide a greater quantity of product than your competition
In business, you generally get to pick two out of three of the above at most, and you better have a good business head on your shoulders. About 80% of my time is spent doing things other than taking pictures, and that's all to ensure that my overall business remains stable.
They feel because they invested so much time and money and years in the photography business, they should be immune to technological upheavals such as those in the movie and publishing industries. Almost anyone can get a very nice camera today and photo editing software to produce their own. And in fact, with such a low cost and ease of entry, I have seen a number of people do exactly that undercutting the "established photographers".
The best photographers I know embrace change, adapt to it and thrive and yes, it's never been easier to get started in photography. That shouldn't be a threat to anyone - it's just progress. Professionals will always be in demand in my industry so long as we can produce the content our clients want.
VKT claims he is committed to enforcing his copyrights. Well, Oscar, myself, and the ELI community are equally committed to copyright infringement defense against unjustifiable and outrageous claims against entitled photographers and stock photo agencies.
Whilst I do not dispute that there are some "copyright enforcers" out there who misguidedly think that pursuing an infringement claim is a route to easy money, I would refrain from tarring all content creators with that same brush.
Since you discussed technological changes, it's only been relatively recently that small scale content creators have had inexpensive or free technologies at their disposal to track down instances where an infringement might have occurred.
Heck, the first time I was made aware of any significant infringement of one of my own shots - well, if I hadn't been told about it by a third party, it would have escaped my notice completely, as this was before the days of TinEye and other image searching engines.
These days, in the same number of mouse clicks it takes someone to grab one of my shots, I can also find out if that very thing has happened - and that's the position for a lot of creators out there. We're trying to stop the flood, doing our best to educate people that sharing our work with reckless abandon has real-world consequences for us and, when all else fails, using the law to level the playing field.
I'd like to think that no creator actively wants to litigate - and, as I said in another positing, I'd also like to think that VKT would not be complicit in allowing his work to spread, with the sole intention of threatening litigation. That would be plain wrong on so many levels and contra to the spirit (in my opinion) of protecting the value of one's work.
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