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Amateur footage of events - do they pay?
stirlingguy1
Posts: 7,038 Forum Member
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OK, say I had filmed the Woolwich attack, or the recent aeroplane which caught fire over Heathrow (I haven't, I'm just wondering), would the people who filmed it routinely get paid for this footage by the likes of Sky, BBC, ITV?
I'm also amazed by how quickly Sky have managed to find the amateur footage of the plane with smoke coming out of it.
I'm also amazed by how quickly Sky have managed to find the amateur footage of the plane with smoke coming out of it.
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In the case of the BA plane that will most likely be people uploading to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or perhaps emailing directly to Sky themselves. I doubt anyone has been paid for it.
Have a read of this.
To make serious money you have to have something that no one else has and it is probably best going through an agency even though they will take a substantial commission. You also need to get it to them fast.
Most images from mobile phones won't be paid for. The BBC insists the pictures it receives are royalty-free, to be published in any way it chooses. Sky News says it depends on their quality.
A spokesperson for Sky said: "We judge each offer of pictures on a case by case basis and would consider paying for footage on rare occasions where pictures have extraordinary editorial value."
Ah, yes, Abraham Zapruder, possibly the first "citizen journalist" in the world.
I would have thought that in order to obtain the copyright the broadcaster would have to pay the person who shot the material.
Generally the broadcasters don't take the copyright - that remains with the person who shot the video. What they do is get the person to grant them a licence to use the footage.
So presumably that person receives a percentage of any sales the broadcaster makes ?
Unless you mean sales by the broadcaster to other broadcasters / media? I would think it is usually on a flat fee basis.
It happens quite often. You only have to look on the likes of Liveleak to find recent examples from Syria where the cameraman catches a snipers bullet.
We wont see an end to it when nearly everyone has a camera in their pocket on their phone.
It must have happened, just look at footage of things like the Tsunami where many people seemed to stop to take picture rather than run as fast as they could.
I don't mind giving pictures to BBC News, some of mine were on just about every news bulletin for a few days and I was contacted by a commercial TV company who I think wanted me to send to them in future but I ignored them.
Not unless that's what they agreed when licencing the content. For example, the standard licence the BBC have people use for amateur footage submissions is "You hereby grant to the BBC a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, fully paid-up, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works." I'd imagine other broadcasters use something similar.
Though in practice the BBC don't tend to sell that footage, they'll pass people on.
But a clause like that is required, for example, the BBC to use it on BBC.com (as they have to sub licence it to BBC Worldwide).
There's a BBC blog on this I remember there being some fuss about a little while ago - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/08/use_of_photographs_from_social.html
Haven't you seen Enemy of the State?
I guess they could say the same if they took clips from youtube and pics from twitter etc.
Yeah, they also have deals in place with other broadcasters around the world (abc in the US for example) to share content.
Fair use maybe, but not public domain. In the UK, broadcasters can claim something similar for the purpose of reporting current events, but as soon as the event ceases to be current, they can't use the footage any more under this clause.