As a supporter and defender of photographers' rights, ImageRights laments the continuing erosion of the rights and protections afforded photographers by their commercial distribution partners. These rights and protections are critical to the livelihoods of photographers individually and to the vitality of the profession and to the arts overall. Yet, perplexingly, the terms of service that their selling agents are forcing upon them (for example, retroactive licensing of infringers, and retention of licensing rights in perpetuity) effectively degrade - not by law but in practice - the copyright status of their works to that of public domain or creative commons works.

We see firsthand the damage these increasingly industry-wide, retroactive licensing practices wreak upon photographers, in some cases costing them thousands in damages, not to mention losses after the infringement due to the time and resources spent by both themselves and their legal representatives on the undermined claim. Clearly such distribution industry participants have opted to mollify their customers (and conveniently brand new customers in some cases) at the expense of the contributors who make their business possible.

As a result of these pervasive but unwritten historical practices, and now as we see here in these brazenly codified policies, ImageRights has been and will continue to be forced to turn away photographers with copyright infringement claims, not based on the lack of wrongful conduct, but merely because the image at issue has been distributed via a particular commercial conduit.

As in the case of Alamy, most agencies are run by decent people who quite often are photographers themselves. ImageRights understands that agencies are subject to competitive and financial pressures and must adapt to sustain and grow their businesses. We are disappointed though that too often such sustenance and growth comes at the expense of the product creators for the benefit of product consumers. We implore those involved in setting policy and terms of service to reconsider the larger, potentially devastating impact that such practices have on the rights and indeed on the very outlook of the photographers they serve.

You can read an open letter from EPUK to Alamy (and Alamy's response) concerning these new contributor contract terms here.