Tag: Redundancy

Copyright and the lawyer’s letter

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Image: Passenger ferry The Pearl asunder in the Brisbane River, February 1896. Source State Library of Queensland

Most weeks this 1200-word essay comes with a copyright illustration. I’m not entirely sure it really needs one; as often when readers reply,  they strip the image out. The weekly sourcing of a relevant image can be a bit time-consuming, but a worthy task.

It’s not an issue when the topic is covered by photos I have taken on the road or around town. She Who Also Takes Photos and other family members also contribute.

As a rule, I use images which are covered by a Creative Commons license, or I browse websites which provide free images.

On occasions, photographers and cartoonists I have worked with in the past positively respond to a request to use an image. As ours is a not-for-profit enterprise, the goal is to source free images.

I was lured into writing about copyright and images after emailing the media department at Queensland’s State Library. I was clarifying permission to use an image of a ferry disaster on the Brisbane River in 1896 to illustrate a new song. I have seen this image used in the media but assume those media outlets also sought permission. It is folly to assume otherwise.

When I worked in the daily newspaper business, I attended a workshop for journalists about using other people’s images. A professional photographer had written to (an un-named newspaper), complaining that it had used one of his images without permission or payment. Yes, honest mistakes happen in every business, but it won’t get you off the hook. Even though the image in question had been used as an icon (postage stamp size), the publisher still had to send the photographer a cheque. And fair enough too. The difference is that a license for a one-off use would have cost a fraction of what the publisher eventually stumped up.

That was a long time ago, when free-lance photographers roamed the continent and took ‘stock’ photos which they would sell and re-sell to media outlets all over the world. I once met such a character on the road in the Northern Territory. He was away from home a lot but made a handsome living taking images in remote locations and licensing them to media outlets.

Now, in the age of smart phones and instant communication, everyone’s a photographer. Many of us freely give our images away, sending in stunning winter morning or sunset snaps for the daily weather reports. What we used to call ‘spot news’ – that is, a news story derived from being in the right place at the right time, is also the province of anyone with a smart phone and an email account. Certainly if the story is big enough and the image one of a handful, whoever took it will command a fee.

You would probably be aware that many media outlets have made photographic departments redundant in recent years. This often involved giving long-serving staffers sizeable payouts. News Corp alone laid off about 100 staff photographers between 2017 and 2021.

Some ex-news photographers continued to work as free-lancers – weddings, parties, fashion shoots. But it seems clear that in many instances photo licensing agencies like Shutterstock, Alamy, Dreamstime and Getty Images have replaced staff photographers. As you might expect, some ex-staffers make a less reliable living providing images to said agencies.

Warning: copyright laws can and do keep changing

We should be clear about copyright. If you take a photograph, the copyright is automatically yours. Even if you have offered it to a media outlet, the copyright remains with you. The small print (non-exclusive license), is important, so make sure you are covered.

At this point I should talk about social media and sharing of content. Many publishers now allow sharing under a creative commons license (you can use the content but must attribute the source). Where the water gets  muddy is when someone tampers with the original work or imitates it. For example, you will sometimes see on social media a photo of the famous five crossing Abbey Road, with other characters (e.g.The Simpsons) substituted. Correct me if I’m wrong, John, but is this now an infringement of copyright? A law passed in the UK in 2012 argued that if you intentionally re-create a famous photo, you may be in breach of copyright.

If you are an artist promoting your work on-line, take care when ‘curating’ content for a slideshow or video. It’s no defence to say, ‘I found it on Google’, which at the end of the day, is a only search engine which finds appropriate images on command. If your browse YouTube videos you will often see slideshows accompanying songs with not a credit in sight. Likewise, people who edit someone else’s image to to make an on-line joke (meme) are taking a risk if the image is not theirs to use. Anyone can use a reverse search app like TinEeye to see who owns a photo, so there are no excuses. Pixsy, a US-based tech firm which monitors photographic use for more than 100,000 clients, estimates that 85% of the images uploaded to the web are used without permission or license. In 2017 Pixsy compiled this fascinating list of the 10 most famous copyright cases.

Since 2012 or so, the massive improvement in smart phone photography has led to a process academics call “the democratisation of photography”. In social media you may also come across the phrase ‘pixels for all’. It’s all to do with the speed by which images are taken and then posted.

In a recent episode of the SBS crime drama Bosch, maverick detective Harry Bosch and partner Jerry Edgar visit a Los Angeles gang house, ostensibly to ask questions. The process goes awry as suspects are taken in for questioning. Punches are thrown and Jerry ends up throwing a suspect to the ground in a choke hold

“Police brutality!” yells one suspect (a gang enforcer). By the time Bosch and Edgar get back to police HQ,  footage and photos taken by neighbours and bystanders are all over Facebook.

When I worked in newspapers (before digital anything), a photographer would have to (a) attend the scene), (b) take photographs and (c) hightail it back to the office to develop the film and come up with prints for the 2pm news conference.

Today, someone can lift an image from Facebook and slap it on to the relevant on-line news page in the time it takes to walk to the editor’s office and say, “we got the headshot”.

 While daily media standards may have slipped, here at FOMM HQ we strive to do the right thing. If someone has decided to share their creative content with our wider audience, the least we can do is give them a byline. The free content websites (Pixabay, Unsplash, Free Images and others), link to photographers’ websites. Commonly the photographer suggests – “Buy me a coffee’’ – which is a hint to drop a few coins in their PayPal account.

As for historic images, anything taken before 1955 is in the public domain. The photo of the Pearl, a cross-river ferry that came to grief in 1896, originally appeared in The Queenslander, attributed to N Colclough. It may be out of copyright, but full marks to the librarians and photo editors who saved negatives like these for future generations to see.

This week is a 2 for 1 special – not only do you get to learn a few things about copyright, you can follow this link to my new song ‘The Pearl’. It’s free to have a listen.

 

The demise of Page Turner

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Beth Allen turns the page for Wendy Harper, accompanying soprano Marina Poŝa at Lift Gallery

Technology’s great, except when it does you out of a job. My friend Spike trained in the 1960s as a hot metal typesetter, a printing technique dating from the late 1800s. This industry relic was replaced by phototypesetting, which produced columns of print ready to be ‘pasted up.’ This last bastion of the printing trade was made obsolete by digital newspaper publishing systems, the personal computer and desktop publishing software.

In the music world, the traditional role of page turner is threatened with obsolescence by the advent of clever new apps for Ipads and tablets, controlled with a foot pedal. You may have seen singers at gigs with an Ipad attached to their mike stand – foot pedal optional. This is the modern musician’s answer to the wind snatching your chord charts or lyric sheets from the music stand during the four bars between the end of the chorus and the next verse. The job of piano page-turner, however, is a little harder to render obsolete, because the pianist relies on a human being to know, by visual cues and musical knowledge, just when to turn the page.

Our photo today shows Beth Allen turning the page at a critical point in the aria La Maja y el Ruisenor (The Maiden and the Nightingale) by Granados for Wendy Harper, accompanying soprano Marina Poŝa at Lift Gallery.

This is old school and Beth, who is a good sport, puts up with her partner Kim’s jokes, introducing her as ‘Miss P. Turner!’

Just so you know, Page Turner is a Korean TV drama and there are at least two people who go by a similar moniker, one being Daniel Frank Kelley, aka Paige Turner or Showbiz Spitfire, an American drag queen, comedian and singer.

There’s more, but this is a family show, so I won’t be directing you elsewhere.

The classical music page turner does indeed have to read music, pay attention and not beat the pianist to the turn. Wikipedia describes the typical page-turner as ‘a friend or acquaintance of the pianist and preferably a pianist as well’. The job is a handy earner for music students; to wit, notes left on conservatorium noticeboards – “free-lance page-turner, available nights and weekends – attentive and reliable.”

Now there are Ipad apps which will turn the page for you, including Tonara for Ipad and Pageflip, an Ipad app which comes with a foot pedal. Ipads and tablets have become quite the thing among musicians and sound engineers. You may have been at a live gig and seen the sound guy wandering around the room, tablet in hand – that’s his mixing console.

My versatile musician friend Silas Palmer scored a gig last year accompanying octogenarian balladeer Kamahl on a tour of Queensland. They were using backing tracks, with Silas on whatever brand of grand piano was in residence at the various venues. I noticed he had a tablet on the music stand, where pianists normally put their scores.

“What’s with the tablet?” I asked after the show.

“Oh that’s just chord charts,” said Silas, “and the set list”.

But getting back to the human page turner, sitting patiently to the left of the pianist, watching and waiting for the moments (there could be dozens of turns, depending on the length of the piece), to show their skills. Some classical musicians scoff at the notion of using a tablet or Ipad, saying good page turners have a ‘job for life’.

Organist Michael Hammer, someone whose knowledge of page turning seems beyond reproach, has devoted an article (with photos) to the subject, leavened with a noteworthy sense of humour.

He advises page turners to ask the pianist to perform a “windmill’ with their arms so the turner can judge how far away to sit, given that some pianists can get a bit carried away. It is also important, he says, to watch the pianist to see where they are up to on the score.

“If he is short enough, you might be able to make out when he is at the top of the page. Despite their good looks, it is still advisable to look at the music and not at the pianist.” 

But on to more weighty matters

I came to this subject after pondering the business world’s most common response to declining revenues: making do with fewer people. Along the way, big business appropriated the words redundant (defined by dictionary.com as the state of being not or no longer needed or useful) and retrenchment (the act of retrenching; a cutting down or off, as by the reduction of expenses.) The meanings of these words are so closely entwined the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) considers them interchangeable. (Some, perhaps more sensitive, employers try to soften the blow by explaining that it’s the job, not the person that is ‘redundant’. However, given that ‘the sack’ is still the result, it is questionable whether this does actually make the ‘sackee’ feel less unwanted. (SWSLTHAS) (She who sometimes like to have a say.)

The hardest form of retrenchment is the list posted on the cafeteria wall of those whose jobs will go on (date). The softer form is what is known as ‘a round of redundancies’, typically offered to well-paid middle managers, those whom upper management may have identified as not delivering value for money. So they go home, do some sums on the back of an envelope, talk it over with their spouse and maybe go to work next day and say “Yes thanks, I’ll take the redundancy.”

Some big companies offer up to four weeks for every year of service, plus accrued holiday and long service leave entitlements. The trouble with waves of redundancies and retrenchments, they are often linked to companies doing it tough or going broke, usually at a time in the economic cycle when it is difficult to find another job, especially when your last position was made redundant. The word has some pejorative connotations that cannot be easily shrugged off.

According to the ABS, retrenchments peaked at 7.3% of employed persons in 1972, fell away to 4.1%-4.6% between 1986 and 1990, but rose again to 6.5% during the 1990s recession.

We can compare those historical figures (almost half of those retrenchments happened in the manufacturing sector, by the way), with the period 2000 to 2013, when the rate fell from 4.0% in 2000 to a low of 2.0% in 2008, before increasing sharply in 2010 to 3.1% and remaining at that level through 2012 and 2013. But it does depend where you live and work. The Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia had the highest retrenchment rates, harking back to February 2000 (6.0%, 5.4% and 5.1%).

The future for manual workers looks bleak. A study by real estate firm CBRE and capital management group Genesis forecasts that robots will make 50 occupations redundant by 2025.

And if you are training (or re-training after a redundancy), this Daily Mail report includes two handy lists: (i) which jobs are most likely to succumb (e.g. telemarketers, photographic process operators and tax preparers) and (ii) those occupations which may prove to be retrenchment-proof (e.g. chiropractors, orthodontists and supervisors of correctional officers).

Journalists did not make either list, which is surprising, given the recent flood/spate/outrage/raft of media redundancies. This scary story by Ross Miller in The Verge is cause to ponder the omission: