#0
Not to bother anybody or create any bad feelings but I feel quite frustrated as one of my story was rejected with the reason "we do not allow images of television sets or screenshots. These
images can not be widely distributed through our clients and buyers".
So I don't undestand why have the following stories for example been published then?
http://www.demotix.com/news/1007354/english-wikipedia-24-hour-blackout-protest-us-sopa-law
http://www.demotix.com/news/1007621/wikipedia-black-out-website-protest-against-sopa-and-pipa
Infact, I got the same inspiration to do an article on Facebook , taking pictures of my monitor, therefore has been rejected.
So I am wondering how the rules are applied over there.
Thanks in advance,
Donald
Donald Piccione
This may be a new rule after quite a few people posted images that were screenshots of the recent Wiki et al blackouts over piracy. I thing this is a goo idea for two reasons.
1 copyright... the screen shots or those that are basically a photo of a screen could be seen as a violation. (feel free to argue that in a US court using your money 
This is why so many photographers are banging on about copyright as people seem to thing that if it is on a computer screen it is "free".
2 in the case of the wiki screen shots they were on millions of computer screens globally. The story was very important that is journalism. However the screen image was one we all saw. ALL the news outlets could see it themselves and do a screen grab themselves. No way could Demotix sell those images to a single person on the planet. Uploading them was a waste of bandwidth and hard drive space. .
An article on Facebook would be interesting but Demotix is a News image system not a news story system. They push the images and captions at editors NOT the story. Hopefully one day Demotix will, like AP and Reuters run stores as well. Then rather than Picture Editors come to Demotix for images for stories they know about the Editors will look to Demotix for Stories (words and images) they may not have head about before.
Chris Hills
Jagraphics
www.jagraphics.co.uk/photo
Donald,
My names Stephen Sidlo, head publisher here. Now, we are primarily a photo news site. We encourage photography, we then encourage debate.
Wikipedia - the site was blocked and down, showing the world a website in state of activism. There was a surge in SOPA being covered. As a pro-photography guy, I want the community to think outside the box on these issues and in all fairness, get out there and shoot. The world is 24/7 internet information. We at Demotix felt that this was a once in a lifetime event, that a well used source closes - like a major library closing in protest.
Facebook is always there, you did mention http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0129/facebook_timeline.html - but to be honest most people can get a screenshot, it is possible that RTE have Getty images on subscription.
It is also two fold. We try to be careful on screenshots, and to allow all - will provide people with the excuse to photograph every tweet on twitter - then the argument can descend back to 'Is Twitter the first for news?' and thus why not allow images of that news to be sold.
As publishers we have to control it to a certain extent. I don't want this site to become a haven for screengrabs that don't sell, of snippets of the internet.
Hope this helps.
Stephen
