Luis writes: > Too young for curmudgeon-hood, Karl. oh do tell, old man! > It's the real world. Why should > anyone expect something for free ? sheesh, and here was I thinking myself the cynic! >Without the occassional ad/pop-up, > or string attached ? The cyberworld is just like the real one. No free > lunches. Everyone's a Romulus waiting for a lactating she-wolf...gimme > a break. > < more snipped indignation> > I suppose the warning is a good thing. After all, people should read the > small print every time they enter into a contract. In my opinion, Fuji is > providing a free service at their expense, and risk management has done > its best to protect their company from all possible liability. Does anyone > really think Fuji will make millions from web pictures ? not quite, my indignation was piqued more by this bit : "you grant to us and to any store which uses the Service and which you have requested upload your images or photographs to the Service, a non-exclusive transferable worldwide royalty-free copyright licence to reproduce.." ie, 'to sell your images if we so chose' hehe - they offer to store full printable images of LARGE sizes, not just web images... the sort of stuff that they maybe could flog to the local newspaper or stock library :-/ >Puh-leeze. It > will cost them much more to maintain the server space, hire the > many trained and expensive photo-researchers to dig through the > inevitable mountain of imagery for a marketable image, than it would to > hire someone to shoot it. the software might not be perfected yet but there IS stuff out there than can dredge the mountains of images looking for 'white cats' or 'cute puppies'.. I should imagine when it is fine tuned and Fuji has aquired the unconditional repro rights for gazillions of images, it could prove a nice little earner for them ;-) >If Fuji had a no-prize contest, they'd get > better images (pre-edited) and copyright free. The notion that there's > a sinister conspiracy underfoot, and that Fuji is wringing greasy > palms in anticipation of ripping off all the *COUGH* young photographers > is unlikely, IMO. All the Canon and Fuji photo competitions I've seen recently include in their rules a bit that says ALL images submitted become the shared property of the Author and the company (Fuji, canon, whatever) and by merely entering you grant them "non-exclusive transferable worldwide royalty-free copyright licence to reproduce.." "_transferable_" ie salable this is after you pay the entry fee, post your images off and get the polite reply that you won nothing. I'd be a little peeved to hear "sorry, not good enough" and then open the paper one day to see my image selling cars or sommat.. it HAS proved worthwhile for them in the past - One instance I heard of was a particular image of a chid was the key to a campaign somewhere that increased their gross sales considerably. The photographer was making a fuss about it because he didn't get a cent from Fuji <can't recall the details> > The righteous indignation is understandable, and the warning a good > thing. Just say no. that's what I've been doin' ! ;-) >Oh, I forgot, no one says no... well, not to YOU maybe .. k
