Update: Important, Please Read.

Stock 2.jpg

Some legal heads ups!

I wasn't planning to do an update so soon after the last, but things have been moving forward so quickly and a few things have come up which probably need a bit more clarity. While the community is intended purely as a gathering place for artists and bloggers to meet, there are laws across the world which can impact how we use photographs, for privacy and copyright reasons. This impacts bit the photographer and the person using that image. For the most part, there's not much we need to worry about, except when it comes to photographs of recognisable people and product brand names and logos.

So let's start with people in photographs. While you are allowed to photograph people in public places and use those photos personally or none commercially, it starts to become a grey area of they are used for any commercial or trade purposes. This is likely to include blogging, because money can be made. So if there are any photos with recognisable people, a model release is recommend or full permission of the model in the photo to allow its use by others. It may be that it is friend or a family member, who give their permission, so in this case, it wouldn't need to be an official document, but just an acknowledgment that the model is not going to sue the photographer or any other publisher of the photo in the future. Some more information on the legalities and using model release forms can be found here.

My suggestion to photographers is that if you offer the use of photos with people in them, perhaps make it clear that permission has been obtained from them for use, whether it's people you know or you have a model release. If you're wanting to use a photo and it isn't clear whether permission has been obtained, perhaps check with the photographer or edit to make sure people aren't recognisable.

If a photograph contains pictures of recognisable brands and logos, then you could be in breach of copyright if it's used for commercial purposes and again, blogging could come into this, unless you're doing a review of it. While it seems unlikely that a company would want to sue you for displaying their brand (after all, it's free advertising), they might decide that you need to pay them a cut of your earnings for its display, so again, best if brands don't appear in photographs or they aren't recognisable if they do.

NFT for photography

This week @lensy, an NFT platform for photography, was launched by the team from NFT Showroom:

@juliakponsford
@isaria
@swelker101
@crimsonclad
@aggroed
@victoriabsb
@r0nd0n
@clayboyn

Currently they are still in an evaluation phase, so photographers will need to apply to be whitelisted before they can start tokenising. However, if you're shopping for photos I'm sure you can start right away. Find out more about it on their FAQs page.

Searchabilty of the Index

Some good news is that @riverflows has informed me that she is finding the Stock Images Index easy to search, using “control F” then typing your search word, eg. “birds.”

I'm pleased to have been able to use this beautiful image from @lifeskills-tv. The hive bee is a creation of @sitaru. Both are beneficiaries of this post.



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I've been in the stock photo industry for 5-6 years and I tend to agree with you with regards to the model and property releases for Hive.

Perhaps the only possible usage of non-released photos with recognizable people and/or logos is the case when the photographer explicitly states the photos are for Editorial use only and the payout of the post by the user is denied. Otherwise, even if the user says it's an editorial usage, as there is profit, it is in fact obviously a commercial use ;) But hey, then all such photos we take of other people and use here on the blockchain must be released as we profit? This might become a huge legal issue for Hive one day. Not to mention the improperly sourced images from the free banks and the stolen images from the net. That's another huge topic though.

I recommend a handy mobile app for the releases, it's awesome, costs about 10 USD. I used to issue paper releases prior having it and it was really a pain in the **s, pardon my French.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/easy-release-model-releases/id360835268
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.applicationgap.easyrelease.pro&hl=en_US

Thank you and stay safe :)

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It's a bit of a minefield, isn't it!
Most people don't earn much here anyway, so hopefully it's not with the effort to do much more than request removal of the photograph.

Thanks for the tip on the app. I'll let my daughter know.

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Absolutely a minefield, well said. If we become millionaires one day (fingers crossed) we could draw some hungry sharks attention, LOL.
Stock photo business is dying, IMHO, if not already dead. I have uploaded thousands of high quality images to about ten agencies and I got more profit from Hive, than all of them agencies, combined. So sad. And I post here only once or twice a day :)

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Perhaps they've been flooded with so many photos there's too much to choose from and few end up used. So many free to use ones out there too. Maybe we're onto something here with the Stock Images community.

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True :) Also, some of the biggest newspapers are good now with mobile snaps so no pro level photos needed anymore. Not to mention the mobile camera manufacturers war that pushes up the quality by each day. Moreover, often the agencies are much more concerned about their profits and salaries, contributors are not a priority at all. From my point, it turned from a promising future (let's say this is how it seemed ten years ago) to a hobby for my free time. I hope your initiative turns into something huge and useful :)

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