The Life magazine photo archive is now online offering a chance to see what would arguably be the “greatest hits” of the photography world in the last century. One could spend hours looking through the galleries. The site was developed in collaboration with Getty Images who will add 3,000 additional images per day.
This is amazing look at history from W. Eugene Smith’s WWII gallery to the many celebrity galleries from Hollywoods golden era.
What’s creating quite a stir is that the images can be used without rights fees for any non-commercial use. That would include this blog.
Photographer Vincent Loforet writes on his blog: Perhaps what I find more interesting in all of this – is how Time and Getty Images are in effect encouraging the use of their images via e-mail, blogs, and social networking sites – without charging for that use (as long as it’s a “non-commercial” use.) I think it’s very important to really study that – as they are in effect setting a precedent that images shared via those avenues should not lead to any income for photographers or agencies. It stands to reason that LIFE.com and Getty Images stand to gain something from having thousands of eyeballs driven back to their sites – but haven’t the photographers lost yet another way of making potential income – even if these images were to be licensed for a nominal fee for personal use? Are blogs and social networking sites in effect being granted a de facto right to publish images for free from hereon out?
I’m quite sure that opinions similar to Loforet’s will be many in the coming days. The mindset of people will be if they can use a historical photo from the Life archives your images are fair play as well. The barn door has been cracked for sometime – this will blow it off the hinges.
The only good thing to come out of this is a look at some amazing and memorable photography.
Not being a commercial photographer, there are many things about rights and money and fair usage… that I don’t understand. What is the statute of limitations for photos (if there are any)? I think it’s great to be able to see images that are relatively old and otherwise would be rotting away in storage somewhere. When I’m long dead, anyone who wants to see/use my images is fine by me, but like I said, I’m a lowly staffer and don’t make a living using commercial rules.
The more free images out there – the more your present work is devalued making if that much harder to retain a staff position. Also once people start grabbing Life images for free they will think nothing of doing the same with another photographer’s images.