Just one complaint – the iPod’s not loud enough!

My name’s Adam Ralph and I write for Nuts magazine. I also put together the Spam page in Nuts and, with your permission, we’d love to publish your Boing Jon Malkovich effort.

Each week the best Spam wins a prize, so although we can’t pay you for your work, there is a chance you could win.

If this is ok, could you please write me back giving persmission along with any credit you would like included.

If you don’t want us to publish your work, please let me know and we won’t.
___________________________________________________________________

I’ve replied that they can provided they credit me as Steve P (B3ta).

Nonetheless, the phrase “If you don’t want us to publish your work, please let me know and we won’t” is still an opt out rather than an opt in which suggests their attitude hasn’t chamged completely.

********** REPLY BY THE GREAT ARCHITECT **********
Thanks for the reply Steve. I too have had Adam contact me via B3ta, and I’ve replied to him this evening. Hopefully I can get a resolution on the main points raised in this blog entry asap, as the requested date for payment of the invoice I sent (5th March) has now passed. Having been contacted by someone at NUTS on the 5th Match, wanting to deal with it then, and now hearing from Adam, I’m still confident that a successful and amicable resolution can be reached, which will then allow me to blog a nice result on the situation. NUTS have asked to publish two of my images in the last week, and at present, I am holding off on giving permission until this situation is resolved. Where there is a genuine chance of a B3ta.com contributor winning a small prize for an image which they have given the ‘nod’ to printing in NUTS, I see no reason why they shouldn’t, it would be silly not to as it’s always nice to see some of your own images in print. it’s also nice that they are also offering to credit the images to the creator as well, which is nice to see.

fingers crossed that my situation above resolves itself soon, I’m keen to write a concluding piece on it, and would like it to be favourable to all concerned, and then we can all get back to what we all do best, which is make funny images for B3ta

From TGA: Leave it to me

The weird thing is… The first couple of images they used of mine, they didnt bother asking if they could use. Since then they have asked via pm. To which I always reply no… It seems saying no prevents publication. I reply “no” due to them removing my tags.
The most I expect is the credit for the ‘hummus’ .

..The whole thing about getting paid for our images does not sit well with me. I mean most of the time we have nicked a shopped somewone elses hard work. If we get paid for our ’shopped stuff, does that in turn mean we must do the right thing and pay the originators of the stuff we shop?

Without the “Now Thats what I call” logo the humour would be meaningless, I am sure the graphic designer that made the logo would want his share of the £150. I would hazard a guess that most b3ta users do their stuff for fun without having the worry of chasing their tails wanting to get paid for what is essentially throw away stuff.

********** REPLY BY THE GREAT ARCHITECT **********
The ‘Buzz’ always used to be there for me as well. I’m not in the industry for these things as such, it was always a nice ‘pat on the back’ moment. However, after a while, when images are repeatedly used without permission, it starts to make you think about the free content that the magazines and publications get. If the credit was duly given, and permission was asked well before publishing I would have little to no problem with ‘5-min throwaway’ images being used. They were, after all, produced exclusively for a non-profit making website (B3ta.com) and also for this blog. However, people who ARE in this industry (the media/publication companies) and KNOW the legal side of these things blatantly overstep the mark and the guidelines set up for the industry Where images have been produced ‘from scratch’ (i.e. such as the ‘Now’ Logo, which wasn’t photoshopped from the original, but was a ham-fisted job on photoshop) the creator of that image then gets into a situation when they see their ‘work’ sprawled across publications, and in many cases, changed from the original version by being cropped, edited, de-tagged and suchlike. These publications wouldn’t do that to a bona fide photographer or photo journalist, it’s just that we are ‘lesser’ people in the industry, mostly with little or no knowledge. I would have NO problem in apportioning a part of any fee received to the original copyright holder if I used another image without permission which I received payment on. As it happens, I always tend to squirrel away any money received for such images to charity, as I don’t rely on photo-shoppery for a salary, it’s just a hobby, so at least someone benefits in the long run. However, the principle remains that many publications take images without seeking permission from the ‘creator’, which not only puts the creator in danger if their image (usually produced for the non-profit making B3ta.com website) is used in a profit making publication, but also involves the publication itself, who must KNOW they are also infringing any existing copyright by publishing it. That’s one of the reasons why ZOO now ask permission to publish via the internal message system on b3ta, and generally always ask in communication for confirmation that the creator is the ’sole’ creator of the image, thus putting the legal responsibility onto the creator, and they can then get away publishing it without paying a fee, and without legal repsonsibility, as they have a statement from you in black and white stating sole ownership. Dangerous grounds indeed.
As a small example of their ‘free content’, last year ZOO magazine were generally running approx. 5 images per week, most without permission, and taken from B3ta. Now, saying that a standard repro. fee could be around £100 per image, IF all of the images were of the sole creator’s ownership…
allow 50 weeks for the year (to include for xmas editions which run over 2 weeks, etc)
50 weeks x 5 images per week x £100 per image = £25,000 of ‘free content’
As said, I’m not in this industry, and as with most of us, always finding my feet with it in this kind of scenario, but that’s a reasonable amount of £ saved for a year of trawling b3ta and other similar websites and lifting images.

Talk to Private Eye. They might not be able to win you anything but an expose (accent that e for me will ya?) on how certain sections of the the press rips off the little guy sounds like their kind of fodder- especially the dynamic contrast with your experience from News International (they paid me as a researcher once many moons ago) and IPC. What will that achieve? Well, once it’s in PE then 90% of the press fraternity will read it and you may get some free legal advice from Robin Hood law firms. At the very least you will have elevated the name&shame to all of their peers.

Fight the power, brother.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We here at ZOO have seen your work pimpmybitchup.jpg on B3ta.com. We would like to publish it in next week’s issue of the magazine, in our “YOU’VE GOT SPAM!” section.

We are sorry, but we don’t pay fees for reproduction of your work in the magazine, but we will of course publish any credit you so desire.

Please confirm that you are the originator of this work and let us know by return email if this is all okay with you.

Please email info@zooweekly.co.uk and make the subject heading SPAM. If we don’t hear from you, we won’t publish.

Many thanks,

ZOO

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I guess it’s decent of Zoo to ask, and I was happy for them to have it having asked about it, though I do not know if they would have used it anyway if I’d said no or not replied.

********** REPLY BY THE GREAT ARCHITECT **********
Thanks for the comment. Probably good that someone has mentioned about ZOO’s handling of this as well. The b3ta.com ‘gaz’ message is standard fare now for most of the images they wish to use from the B3ta.com website – although it did take nigh on high a year of continued ‘communications’ with them to get them to acknowledge what they were doing, and try and find a way to work ‘with’ the members. As you say, at least they are bothering now to ask, although their own ’spam’ images page is somewhat less than it used to be, as I think the situation with ZOO and the B3ta regulars became so bad over the last few months that most people (myself included) denied them permission to use our images.

NUTS on the other hand, have simply refused to acknowledge any communication. Today is the 16th February, my second letter addressd to the Editor, Dominic Smith was delivered on 5th February, and I’ve had no acknoledgement via letter, email or suchlike yet.

As a ‘rough’ calculation, most ‘reasonable’ size publications should be prepared to pay around £150 for publication of an image with prior consent. ZOO was regularly running 5-6 images a week without prior approval.

Calculate this over a 50 week (1 year) period, to allow for some issues over 2 weeks (Christmas, etc) gives us the following – conservative – figure on how much they’ve saved from using our images without permission;

5 images at £150 per image = £750 per week over 50 weeks = £37,500

That’s why it’s easier (and cheaper) to just publish without permission and hope the creators don’t notice.

Thanks for the comment.

[Richard Hammond E.T. spoof] Zoo

[Pope Idol] Sunday Sport

keep up the good fight

My work email was used below