Advice needed on royaltys and usage

gazzak · Feb 9, 2008

Hi All,

I really don't know where to post this so I hope this is OK here.

Background:
I work for a small/medium sized printer company and I've been tasked to get some test prints that we can use to show off our range of printers. These test prints will be purchased by me on behalf of the company, and we would like to put our company logo onto them and print them out at trade shows to show off our equipment and let them take the outputs away with them. The digital files will also be distributed to our smaller dealers for use on our pritners.

Question:
Is the above feasable? I know the copyright/distribution/printing etc of photographs can be/is complicated hence why I'm here for advice before I make a mistake. Is there a site I can buy photos that will enable us to do this?

Any help or advice is appreciated.

Garbz · Feb 9, 2008

Yes there are plenty of stock photo sites. Read the licensing agreements on them. Furthermore you may search Flickr or other photo sites for photos which have the Creative Commons Licence applied to them. But READ THE LICENCE FIRST, there are some restrictions on HOW to use them, but I think you could use them.

gazzak · Feb 10, 2008

Garbz said:
Yes there are plenty of stock photo sites. Read the licensing agreements on them. Furthermore you may search Flickr or other photo sites for photos which have the Creative Commons Licence applied to them. But READ THE LICENCE FIRST, there are some restrictions on HOW to use them, but I think you could use them.

Thanks Garbz.

What exactly is a Creative Commons Licence?

kidchill · Feb 10, 2008

I would just ask some of the photographers on different sites. I personally would give rights to my photos being printed as long as they had my name on them. It would be like free advertising for both your company and the photographer. I would sell the idea in that manner!!!

Garbz · Feb 11, 2008

http://creativecommons.org/ it's basically a licence you can apply to your works. It is kind of like the open source of the creative arts industry.

There's a few different versions of the creative commons licence, some of them permit commercial use of images. Look for images where the site says the images are covered under the creative commons licence, obey the rules of the licence (normally is to give the original photographer credit in some way) and you shouldn't have a problem.