Royalty Free Confusion

[ebizdude]

The Royalty Free Scam

I fele the image cos are running a huge racket.

see images r 2 types. Royalkty free and Righst managed.

Now the image cos are asking webmasters to PAY for royalty free images

If Royalty Free are not free then
1. why isnt a PRICE listed there
2. why does it say a higher DPI would cost so and so
3. For the same low dpi image it says "Royalty Free"
4. Why is the damn image available at all "free" if there is a cost.

The buying and selling rule is "Buyer pays, seller gives". or "maybe seller gives and buyer pays". Both parties know there is a benefit (cost) involved for te goods or the service. This benefit is EXPRESSLY STATED thru a MRP or a listed price or a service contract.

Also whether its corbis or any other company. If they are suing people like this for ROYALTY FREE images, its the height of absurdity. The reasoning is simple

1.If there is a price for the picture. Then why isnt a price mentioned there. Why does it say Royalty Free.
2.Corbis and other images companies have another category called Rights Managed in which the cost of image is mentioned. and anyway the word "Rights Managed" implies there is a cost attached.

If someone violates the "Rights Managed" images, there should be penalty. But why anything for "Royalty Free".

and if there is a payment for Royalty Free images why isnt the EXPRESSLY stated that the Royalty Free image would cost so and so instead of writing stupidly "royalty free" and have a site FREELY available to all without even a basic registartion and showing images without any price and writing Royalty Free there.

[edited by: engine at 12:04 pm (utc) on Jan. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] formatting [/edit]

[wanderlusty]

While I agree they could be clearer, royalty free doesn't refer to the cost of the image, just that there are no royalties on the image once you have purchased it. Basically if you buy a royalty free image you can use it for whatever you want (except resell) however many times you want. It also means that the company can and will sell the image to as many people as possible, so you may see the same image all over the place. Rights managed means that there are restrictions and how and for how long you can use the image. It's more like you are renting than purchasing the image. Usually image companies try to manage it so that two competing companies won't be using the same rights managed image at once. You have to say what industry you are what you are using the image for (websites, print, etc) and how long you want to use it. It can be very expensive!

[ebizdude]

but this is a scam by both getty and corbis

why dont they expessly state that there is a payment involved

[wanderlusty]

It's definetly not a scam, where is the advantage to them in people thinking that these images are free? They cater to industry professionals, and we all know the meaning of "royalty free". I would never expect something to be free unless I could find a place that explicitly said that it was free (there are some stock image sites which are free).

[bcolflesh]

[istockphoto.com...]

[johntabita]

but this is a scam by both getty and corbis

why dont they expessly state that there is a payment involved

When I do an image search on both the Getty and Corbis sites, the resulting thumbnails all say "Calculate Price" or "Image Price" right beneath each one. So I'm not understanding your confusion.

Scam? On the contrary, if it wasn't for RF images, I don't know what we'd do to get images for the sites we build. Oh, I know -- we'd all have to pay $3,000+ to license a single image for 6 months, like in the days when there's were no such thing as RF images. Or we'd have to arrange expensive photo shoots, and pay for photographers, models and props.

Here's some background so that the terminology makes more sense. When a photographer takes a photo, he's the owner -- the copyright holder. If someone wants to use that photo in say, an ad, the photographer has the right to charge him as little or as much as he wants. This usually is done in the form of a licensing fee (not unlike the price you pay to license the software you use). Royalities are the on-going fee if someone wants to use the photograph more than once.

Royalty free simply means that you pay the upfront licensing fee, and are "free" to use the image as many times as you like, without having to pay the on-going royalities from continued use.

Hope that helps.

[ebizdude]

I am getting ur point. But when i went to getty, i didnt see any price for the image there. But it did have a "CALCULATE" price for a higher resolution picture.

anyways, what u say makes sense. can u suggest any sites which have absolutely FREE pics. FREE as in absolutely FREE...

[balam]

> why dont they expessly state that there is a payment involved

d00d, y d0n'7 u @5k 7h3m ur531f?

[endeavour]

I think this is the kind of site your looking for: [morguefile.com...]

[andye]

Royalties = money you pay each time you use an image.

So 'royalty free' means you don't have to pay each time you use the image - only once, when you buy the image in the first place.