Corbis Charged with Usage Violations of Celebrity Images
Photo stock image company Corbis is facing charges of violating celebrity image copyright laws for the third time in the last two years.
This most recent class action lawsuit, initiated by former "Partridge Family" actress Shirley Jones, was...
Bulk Copyright Legitimacy Rejected by Federal Court
From the Ashes: The Rise of a New Photojournalism
Through new distribution platforms, multimedia formats and teamwork, today's photojournalists are trying to resurrect a moribund industry.
BREAKING NEWS — Photojournalism, the use of images to tell stories and convey information about topical events, from the Crimean War to this year's health-care reform debate, has died following a long and gradual illness.
The profession was approximately 150 years old...
Appeals Court Upholds Ruling Over Lost Slides
The ruling on photographer Chris Usher's case against Corbis for losing a case of 12,640 slides, including images from the 2000 presidential campaign, was upheld in the New York Court of Appeals in April.
After winning $157,000 in damages in 2008 despite Corbis' attempt to show that he was negligent in his slide storage, Usher went to the appeals court claiming the payment was not enough to compensate for the slides he entrusted to the photo company...
Economy Forces More Shuffling in Stock Photography Industry
As the financial crisis deepened this winter, several stock photo agencies were forced to restructure or close.
Following its $96 million purchase of the Jupiterimages agency in February, stock photo conglomerate Getty Images laid off 110 employees, 5 percent of its total workforce, in March and closed several Jupiterimages branches in the United States.
Getty says it plans to maintain all Jupiterimages offices in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and will retain the Jupiterimages brand worldwide...
Getty Images Sued by Stock Photographers
Stock photographers Roger Ressmeyer and Richard Minden are leading a $100 million class-action lawsuit against Getty Images over its Premium Access subscription plan. The Premium Access service is an unadvertised product that Getty offers its high-volume costumers.
Joining Ressmeyer and Minden are 84 other photographers, who claim that Getty has violated copyrights and contracts by including rights-managed images in the Premium Access product...
Agencies Slash Royalty Rates
Amid layoffs, reorganizations and market imbalance, a number of photo stock agencies have decided to trim the royalty rates they pay for rights-managed images.
The changes began in September 2008, when Alamy announced that it would reduce its royalty rates from 65 percent to 60 percent. A few weeks later, during the 2008 PhotoPlus Expo, Corbis senior vice president Don Wieshlow said Corbis would lower its rates from a range of 45 to 50 percent to 40 percent as contracts come up for renewal...
Capturing the Wide Sweep of History
It's not easy to encompass a clear vista of well over a million people in one image, but a new panoramic mount, called the GigaPan Epic, appears ready for the job.
Demonstrating the capabilities of the new motorized mount in spectacular fashion this January was photographer David Bergman, who created a monumental image of President Barack Obama's inaugural address. The panorama became an overnight sensation as one of the most viewed photos on the internet. In the first five days after the historic occasion, more than 2 million people in 186 countries viewed the image...
Corbis Under Fire for Loss of Images
Photographers Arthur Grace and Chris Usher have both won settlements in cases brought against Corbis Corp. for the loss of images they submitted to the stock agency. The settlements total more than $800,000.
The court compensated Grace at $667,685 for 45,000 lost images and Usher at $157,121 for 12,640 images. Grace had originally sought $100 million in damages, while Usher asked for $4.5 million. An original 2005 ruling awarded Grace $472,000, which he appealed for being inadequate.
Grace sued Corbis in 2002 when the agency failed to return...
Corbis Shuffles Execs, Cuts Jobs
Photo agency Corbis says it will be cutting approximately 16 percent of its staff over the next year. The move, which will involve 175 layoffs, will reduce the company's size to about 900 employees.
Two of the highest-level executives who will be leaving the company are senior vice president Adam Brotman, who had launched Corbis' microstock site SnapVillage, and chief creative officer Ross Sutherland.
According to Corbis, the layoffs are part of consolidation efforts to remove role duplication between itself and Veer, a competitor that it acquired in 2007. Corbis had previously cut 285 jobs through layoffs in 2007...