PHOTO REMIX?
``````````````````````
Sampling -- It Won't Go Away . . .
The Internet is becoming a free-for-all for music entrepreneurs who creatively "borrow" originals and mix them into their own "originals." Will you find parts of your pictures in a montage of someone else's some day?
Music lovers call it "mash-up" or "bootleg" and it's found on the Internet. It could be a harbinger of what's in store for stock photographers.
"Mash-ups" are "songs" that combine different hit songs without adding any original music. They may represent the first significant new musical genre to be lifted out of the underground, developed, and then spread, mostly via the Web. (Remember "sampling" in the 90's -- Oribital's "Halcyon & On & On"?) The songs typically match the rhythm, melody and underlying spirit of the instrumentals of one song, with the a cappella vocals of another. And the more odd the pairing the better.
MOZART WAS THERE
Classical music lovers know that "sampling" is not new. Mozart, Bach, and Handel all acknowledged existing tunes of the day by using fragments of music from their contemporaries. It wasn't considered infringing, but fits more closely to what might be interpreted today in the Copyright Law as an "authorship" issue.
Technological forces today have encouraged this kind of "borrowing." Cheap computer software, for example, makes it possible for a teenager with no musical knowledge to create professional-sounding productions at home using Internet peer-to-peer services, such as Napster, KaZaa, Audiogalaxy, Spinfrenzy.com and Jungkemonkey.com, which provide a quick way to gather and share music.
Naturally, the music industry is concerned about this, because in most cases the sound tracks are being used without permission. Does file sharing pose a threat to income? Some studies have shown that it does not. Curiously, if sampling were entirely illegal, groups such as Puff Daddy, Missy Elliot, Steps, and other top 40 groups would not have been able to come forth and make money for the major record label companies that now decry sampling. In the world of art, postmodernist Andy Warhol would have found his hands tied in legal battles, thanks to his Campbell Soup depiction and certain other paintings.
AND SO WAS SHAKESPEARE
How does this apply to your stock photos on the web? Should you remove them immediately to prevent someone from using part of your picture as a sample, and then hiding under the protection of the Copyright Law ("authorship")? That is up to you. But sampling is not going to go away. In fact, since Shakespeare's time, and even earlier, "borrowing" from other artists to expand or 'improve' a work of art has been commonplace.
As a stock photographer, prepare to see your web images become a part of Pop Culture in much the same way. While the process gets no endorsement from us here at PhotoSource, it looks like an inevitable part of the package to put up with in exchange for all the benefits of having your images available online. Helpful, of course, would be if Napster-like and other pay-per-use royalty systems are launched to reward the original copyright holder (you) for partial use of one of your images. And who knows, you, yourself, may one day develop as a photographer who uses parts of others' images to create a new image ("authorship") for the general public's enjoyment.
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes.
 Visit the PhotoSourceInternational homepage! Nearly seventy different sectionswith all the information you're looking for await you.Click here. |