Martin Parr in Picture This
January 7th, 2008 | Published in article, editorial, news | 1 Comment
Magnum photographer Martin Parr will be a judge in a new Channel 4 reality show of photographers, Picture This. Photographers compete for a published book and a gallery exhibit.
January 13th, 2008at 9:54 pm(#)
The ‘Picture This’ project is also a website created by Channel 4, which includes a pretty shabby underhand rights grab. Its yet another crowd-sourcing/content mining scam and having the likes of Martin Parr fronting for it, is pretty depressing.
As a member of Magnum, a photo-agency specifically founded to protect the authorial rights of photographers, he doesn’t seem to have much of a problem colluding in the theft of other photographers rights.
Ignorance is no defence I’m afraid. These content theft scams masquerading as competitions or ‘community’ photo sites are so rife now, that when I hear of one, the first place I look in the small print and terms…and am seldom pleasantly surprised.
I can only conclude Martin Parr figured it was a price worth paying (for contributors, not him) to increase his profile.
The Channel 4 website terms and conditions state that all contributors hand over a perpetual Royalty Free license for Channel 4 to use and profit from the images in any way they see fit…but still leaves them legally liable for any misuse.
It also removes the photographers Moral Right, so you don’t even get a credit if your images are published…the ‘Picture This’ TV program end credits shows contributors images, but no photographer is credited.
The programme is totally dishonest - it sells the line that ‘you too can be a professional like Martin Parr’, while simultaneously kicking the ladder away from aspiring photographers by stealing the only asset they have - their images, and the recognition of having created them.