This started making the rounds yesterday. The Stolen Scream: A Story About Noam Galai. I thought it important to post here. Wanted your thoughts to be a part of the conversation.
IMHO, this is:
Exciting.
Scary.
Different.
Opportunistic.
Cannibalistic.
Visionary.
Divisive.
Should we celebrate it or hate it? Lawsuits or a new suit of clothes that recognizes the times?
Two obvious sides with no obvious answer. And on and on… It’s our newest classic challenge as a rapidly evolving industry with the rapid deployment and sharing of information.
What say you?
(via the nice folks at fstoppers)
it seems a bit late now to try and make money off this image
but what he should do is use this image as promotional material himself.
obviously it has mass appeal.. he needs to take advantage of that and ride on the momentum
it sucks he didn’t get paid for it right from the beginning, but since he doesn’t seem to care that much
make the most of it I say.
Criminals will be criminals. Ignorant people will be ignorant. Opportunists will take advantage (which takes us back to the criminals). You can’t stop this.
This guy needs a couple good lawyers to go after those commercial enterprises who should know better than to violate this guy’s copyrights. I suppose it depends on the country the violations are being made in. I wouldn’t worry about the graffiti artists and such. It’s not worth the effort. He should definitely try and make some money from this image… if he wants to. You have to want to… and that takes effort.
If there are so many making money off of his image from products they made and he’s not going to go after them legally then why don’t he make his own products to sell with the same images? Make a public campaign to show that he is the true artist and owner of those photos. He already knows people are buying those images left and right. They all were wrong to use his image without permission but the publicity was free as well. He should take advantage of that. Use this as a way to market his other photos. Seriously, he has one widely recognized photo to put in his portfolio now.
Great post Chase. In the new age of digital media we have done little to protect or collect fees for the use of our work. Industry fragmentation has further contributed to the problem without a standard set of fees for small/normal usage or a unified agency to collect fees for use.
I have been wondering lately why we don’t have or own ASCAP for this very purpose and this video makes it even more evident that we need it now. In the past our industry sold tangible product to be used and them printed into another tangible product so payment had it own method of control within the system. Music had to deal with the intangible product from the start and came up with a great system that works. Now that our creations have become intangible in the new age of digital media we also need these controls so that we can live and produce.
Unfortunately the publishing world that we support has done little to help our cause unlike record companies have for their artists. They often times being the culprits in theft of an image for commercial use themselves.
Question, what if we had an ASCAP of our own (hello ASMP) that would bully these corporations and collect fees for the nominal usage that happens through the web?
The reason the image did so well was in part due to it’s disconnect from the main stream “buy & sell” world. If it was not stolen it would not have represented the cause it symbolized so well & in turn may not have gone literally everywhere. The most interesting part of the story, and what proves my point, is that Getty Images didn’t want the image & thought it was not marketable. Noam said that they were wrong but were they? They could not have collected money from graffiti artist or oposition groups but that is what gave it the street cred to be cool enough for all the other outlets the image enjoyed. The image got it’s real value from the way it was used & the reach it had. It became the common man’s scream. The current way we make money in the image business is changing. That is a fact. “May you live in interesting times.”