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SAA White Paper: Straight Talk About Stock Licensing Models, Part 1 |
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Written by Stock Artists Alliance, Edited by Betsy Reid
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Monday, 13 February 2006 |
Editor's Note: This is the first of a multipart series covering stock licensing models that we will be publishing over the next few weeks.
SAA recognizes the urgent need to expand industry-wide understanding about how stock licensing models work for the creators, users and distributors of images. SAA’s White Paper: Understanding Stock Licensing Models is downloadable from the SAA web site at www.stockartistsalliance.org . Many of the points made in that paper form the basis of this report.
Image creators are having a hard time these days, which is odd considering that everyone says this business is all about the images.
Professional photographers feel increasing pressure to diversify their business opportunities, and many consider stock as a way to do so. The decision to invest in building a stock career is a significant one, especially in the face of a tough, rapidly changing business climate. It is a difficult time for image creators to thrive.
Ours is a highly independent profession that is made up of talented shooters from a range of backgrounds and specialties. We run our own small independent businesses. We are quickly coming up to speed on digital technologies. We join professional organizations for support in terms of education, networking, advocacy and community. SAA was borne out of the need to provide such a resource dedicated exclusively to the interests of stock photographers.
We are today working within an industry transformed by corporate methods and values. We struggle with accepting new terms of doing business that we perceive as leading to the commoditization of our creative work and detrimental to our careers as independent professionals. We balk at accepting a minority share of revenues from the licensing of their images. Such concerns are rational, thoughtful and commendable. And there is rising frustration and concern about the future of this business for image creators.
What’s needed is for photographers – as the copyright holders of the images – to engage in the business of stock photography, not just the creation of images. We must seek to make informed business decisions about how to license our images, considering the impact of our decisions on the business on which we all depend. And photographers need to assert ourselves to play a formative role in shaping how the business of licensing our images will be evolved to meet our needs as well as those of distributors and clients.
Stock Licensing Models Defined
Today, there are fundamentally two approaches to how stock images are licensed: “license by USE” and “license by UNIT.”
Rights Managed (RM) is the dominant “license by use” model, basing license fees on the particulars of that use. The "managed" aspect of RM means that there is a finite limited use. Since all uses are known, clients can identify past or current competitive uses of an image and will have the possibility of licensing an RM image with some degree of exclusivity.
Rights Protected (RP) is a more stringent variation, in which there is built into the license some level of exclusivity or competitive conflict avoidance. The terms RM and RP have been used interchangeably for some time now.
In contrast, Royalty Free (RF) is a license based on UNITS and the RF license fee is essentially perceived as a standardized “purchase price” for that unit. A unit could be a single image (priced by file size), a collection of images (priced by CD or “virtual” CD) or a subscription allowing access to a collection of images (priced by time period). The terms of an RF license grant clients virtually unlimited rights. The same image can be used by any company for any number of uses with few restrictions.
It’s fair to say that RF is a “sore subject” within the stock community and has spurred such heated debate because most stock photographers – along with many other industry professionals – are uncomfortable on some level with the RF business model.
Continue to Part 2
About SAA
StockArtistsAlliance (SAA) is a global trade association dedicated to the interests of Rights Managed stock photographers worldwide through advocacy, education and community.
Learn more about what SAA is doing to help stock photographers at www.stockartistsalliance.org and SAA invites professional photographers, dedicated students and allied industry professionals to apply for membership.
Our StockArtists web site at www.StockArtists.com features over 200 portfolios of SAA member images available for Rights Managed license.
©2005 StockArtistsAlliance. All rights reserved.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 05 March 2006 )
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Bits & Pieces