Hello. I'm a professional photographer in Brunei and have in the past two years been engaged in photography services (freelance) for clients ranging from banks to Oil & Gas organisations to Event organisers and so forth. While I do not have anything concrete to contribute here, I am following this subject closely to see where it leads to.
In most cases of my work to date, my quotes have strictly been commercial Terms and Conditions and the subject of intellectual copyright seem somewhat taboo to be included in the proposal. I say taboo quite simply in that if you condition your clients to accept your quote based on a
law that may be ambiguous to a non-legal professional and based on
information I am able to obtain from The EC-ASEAN Intellectual Property Rights Cooperation Programme (ECAP II) on "How to enforce your IPR" I don't feel confident I have that right without parting with a lot of money in legal representation.
How utterly disappointing I find IPOS has only a one-liner statement that does not protect the interests of its own photographers or do you people think it's actually outdated and photographers need more support from the government? I suppose if you look at this from an economic perspective, there's big money in the film industry compared to still photographs and you only have to look at how much brain cells have gone into
Ownership Rights vs the one-liner.
Photographer or artist: If a photographer is engaged to take a photograph of a person or an artist is engaged to draw a portrait of a person, that person owns the copyright.
I came across what I think is a fairer and mature handling of copyright by Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) Australia, a document called
Copyright For Photographers.
Coming back quickly to my own experience with corporate clients, as an example, we have two kinds of banks operating here - International and Local. It surprises me that a local bank had drawn up a legal document when I was engaged to produce commercial photographs for them which quite frankly works in my favour. It's not a copyright document per se but rather a Model Release Agreement stipulating that the models I had engaged to produce and appear in the bank's flyers and future promotional ads have agreed to allow the bank to use their images unconditionally while I (the photographer) reserves the right to use the images to promote my work. They agree that in the event I choose to do so, ie images shown as portfolio of my photography, it also works in their interests (additional avenue of advertisememts of bank products and services). The international banks on the other hand, are very strict about this, though nothing is explicitly expressed in the quotes/purchase order, they verbally indicate that I absolutely cannot use images that I have produced for them on my website or any self-advertising materials. I have agreed to proceed with the work because of a number of reasons: I was building a portfolio and because we're a small community, I do not need to leverage the work that I've produced for them to promote my name. The fact that members of the bank conscientiously recommend me to their friends does more for my business and name than indulge in a self-righteous pity. At the end of the day, we learnt not to bite the hand that feeds you. Ultimately, the choice is ours and if we feel we are taken advantage of, we can always choose not to accept the assignment and move on.
