Unlock Electronic Signature Licitness for Photo Licensing Agreement

How to eSign a document: electronic signature licitness for Photo Licensing Agreement

so you've hired a photographer to photograph your project but maybe somewhere in the communication with the photographer you start hearing terms like copyright licensing and usage agreement and to be honest many times terms like these are brought up in a conversation because something may have gone a little sideways one party may have done something with the images that the other party didn't agree to or didn't know what the other party could or could not do with them to be clear i'm not an attorney and this shouldn't really be taken as legal advice per se there will always be exceptions to the rule and unique scenarios but for most client photographer transactions i'm going to try to simplify this as much as possible okay so you've paid the photographer and the image files have been delivered you now have the image files in your possession do you own the images well unless it has been explicitly written in a contract or agreement that copyright ownership has been transferred to you by default you do not own the images and you might say well wait a minute i paid for the photos how do i not own them what you have paid your photographer for is a license to use the images in that license or agreement most photographers will allow their client to use the images on their social media their their website their blog promotional materials etc but more often than not that license does not allow you to then distribute the files to other companies or other parties for them to use in their marketing even if they're willing to pay or reimburse you to have them but i paid for the photos i should be able to do whatever i want with them not true again you have a license to use the images to promote your business you do not own the copyright the photographer does i have a license to drive my vehicle but i still have to operate my vehicle within the boundaries of the law let's use an example think of it like this you want to produce a television commercial that will run during local news to promote your company or business the commercial is filmed it's produced you've done the edits and as you look at the final cut you realize there's something missing you'd really like a nice song to play in the background of the commercial so you call your friend chris who happens to play acoustic guitar and is a magnificent songwriter you say chris i want you to write and record an original song completely from scratch that i can play in the background of the commercial i'm making and i'll give you a hundred dollars to do it chris agrees chris takes some time chris writes the song chris records it and sends you the audio file to use as music in the background of the commercial a few weeks later you get a call from a representative of a car manufacturing company they caught your commercial and they want to use that same exact song in a commercial that they're producing and it's eventually going to run in a nationwide campaign and they're willing to pay thousands of dollars to use it are you legally able to just hand over that audio file to the car company for them to use in their commercial absolutely not because you don't own the copyright to that song chris does chris is the one who created the song to put it simply for a hundred dollars chris granted you legal permission to use chris's song in your commercial and that's it you don't own the song the same way you don't own the song sweet emotion by aerosmith because you paid 99 cents for it on itunes if you purchase a license for accounting software to use for your business like quickbooks you don't now own the quickbooks software and since you don't own the song or the software you're not legally able to hand off a copy to somebody else for them to use even if they're willing to pay you that's just not how it works legally they have to purchase their own license to use it now you might say wait a minute the photos are of my project or product the images in question are of something i worked on or i built or i designed and while that's true it doesn't really matter that much when it comes to copyright what's in question is the intellectual property that's owned by the photographer which in this case is the photo itself not necessarily what appears in the photo personally i photograph a lot of residential kitchens so if i happen to take a photo of a kitchen and a coca-cola can just happens to appear on the countertop coke doesn't have the right to just rip the image from my portfolio and start to use it in an ad campaign even if i took a close-up artistic shot of a coke can coke still cannot use the image without my permission again what's in question is not necessarily what appears in the image but the image itself so i paid a photographer to shoot my project and another company wants to use that same photo can the photographer really charge them for an image license too yes again unless there is something clearly placed in writing against it yes a photographer can sell an image license to another party listen this is how we make our living as photographers this is how we pay rent this is how we pay our mortgages this is how we put food on our table if one party wants to use a product that we create that one party needs to pay for it now if 10 parties pop up and want to use our product those 10 parties will need to pay for it but the photographer already got paid by me why should they charge other parties who want to use the same photos think back to the quickbooks software example for round numbers and simplicity let's say that in order for quickbooks to cover business expenses and make a nice profit they need to sell 1 000 software licenses does that mean that customer number 1001 should get it for free no they're not a charity they're a business they need to make a profit and if they just so happen to create a product where they can make a really good profit good for them another thing is by letting other businesses use those image files for free it's also not fair to you you pay good money to hire a photographer to create images that you can then use to promote your company or business why does another company get all the benefits of using the same photos with without having to pay anything there are way more moving pieces to photography and copyright law but hopefully this video somewhat simplifies the basics and fundamentals but why should this stuff even matter to you why not just say dap forget it i'll just go ahead and do whatever i want with the photos because if the photos were taken by even a somewhat knowledgeable and copyright law savvy photographer it could cost the company big time and i mean big if you have a spare 10 seconds just google the phrase willful copyright infringement fine you might realize it's a lot easier and a lot less costly to just do things the right way