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First of all, we do not know the hotel that One Direction is staying in. While we would love to help, we are going to stop responding to email requests asking about that. Mostly just because it’s creepy.

Please, enter with me into the confusing world of photo licensing. Yes, it’s over your head and my head, but maybe we can come to some basic understanding.  We’re not going to make those commercials that say “You wouldn’t steal a car…” with scary background music and try to compare you sharing our pictures to you committing murder. But we do want people to understand how they can correctly use photos online.

 Since the world of photo licensing is pretty difficult, I will attempt to break it down for you. There are three main licensing options:

• Royalty Free
• Rights Managed
• Flat Fee

 A royalty free photo has nothing to do with Will and Kate.  What happens in this contract is you pay for the right (license) to use a photo once, then it is yours to do with as you please. You can post it anywhere and everywhere; however, only you have licensed the image. That doesn’t mean that your best friend can also use that picture in her PowerPoint or on her Tumblr. You alone may use and re-use that photo without having to pay for it each time.

Rights managed is very particular. This is when the photo is licensed from the photographer for a very specific use. The buyer must ask permission from the photographer, and typically pay more, before using it anywhere else. This image cannot be used in any other way than what was specifically agreed to. The plus of having this licensing agreement is that the photographer can agree to protect it from a competitor. Currently, this is the only type of license agreement that Newscom uses.

Imagine the awkwardness when a company and photographer sign a rights managed agreement, then you steal the picture, and somewhere down the line, that company’s competitor grabs that photo before the company can print it. Oops? Imagine trying to be that photographer and explaining that you don’t know how they got that picture…

Not every image online has been licensed, many images are stolen, often by people who just don’t understand how to correctly license images. Odds are, if you just find an image on the internet, you don’t have the rights to use it. Taking a few minutes to research the photo and figure out where it came from and where you can legally get a license to use it will help keep you on the right side of copyright law.

A flat fee is for just one image and is a similar licensing agreement as “royalty free”. It’s intended to be used by only one person, and that person is the “end-user.” End-user just means they’re the last person to use it. They’re the end of the line of users of that particular photo.

Now that you understand the terms used, check back next week to see how and why these laws affect photographers.

You may be interested in some of these other posts from FocalPoint:

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