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Photographer sues AFP for 120 million over Twitter-photos

Timo — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:10:29 +0000

(Photo by GreenLight Designs)

A photographer is suing AFP and Getty Images for 120 million US Dollars over photos that he had taken in Haiti after the earthquake and which he had shared on Twitter.

I find it remarkable that this story doesn’t get more attention because it shows just how much trouble you can get into if you take photos from social media platforms without making sure that you have the necessary rights.

Downloaded from Twitpic

In a nutshell here is what happened (check out the British Journal of Photography if you want more details):

Daniel Morel is a professional photographer and was in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake happened. He immediately started taking photos and made some of them available in high resolution through Twitter/Twitpic. The photos were retweeted and an AFP editor downloaded them and shared them with AFPs own subscribers as well with Getty Images who resold the photos as well. In total 820 copies of Morel’s photos were sold.

The question, which is now being discussed before a New York court, is whether what AFP did was legal or not. AFP argues that Twitters Terms of Service grant third parties the right to rebroadcast content. In addition they argue that Morel de facto consented to the photos being reused in a commercial fashion by making them available through a social network in high resolution.

Morel naturally sees things differently and sues AFP/Getty for the maximum amount of 150,000 US Dollars per alleged copyright infringement.

The rules apply to everyone

This is a really interesting case because AFP essentially argues that it was ok to take the photos and even profit from them financially, simply because they were on the internet. However, at the same time AFP and Getty are pursuing bloggers who take their photos without permission. Surely you can’t have it both ways.

Besides, I would argue that companies, whose sole business model is acquiring and reselling rights should really know better and be held to a higher standard.

I doubt and I don’t think that Morel should get 120 million from AFP. But whatever amount he gets in the end, it should be a warning to all NGOs and humanitarian organizations who are lax about acquiring rights for photos and videos. Having written permission to use photos is absolutely essential!

Sharing photos online – a decision matrix for non-profit organizations

Sharing photos online – a decision matrix for non-profit organizations

Timo — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:17:23 +0000

Many non-profits, NGOs and International Organizations are of two minds when it comes to sharing photos on the internet. On the one hand, they want their material to be shared as widely as possible, on the other hand they want to have total control. The decision matrix below will help you decide which photos to share and how.

Generally speaking, your photos are more likely to be widely used if you give people the explicit permission to use the pictures. The best and easiest way to do this is by publishing them under a so called “Creative Commons License”. These are legally binding terms of use that give you more flexibility than “© all rights reserved”. Photo websites like Flickr allow you to choose a license for each photo so that you can decide exactly what you want to share under which conditions.

You can for example give everyone the right to copy, distribute and transmit your photos but not to alter it or use it for commercial purposes. This license has the technical designation “CC by-nc-nd” (stands for: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works) and is the recommended license for most non-profit photos.

Decision matrix - click image to see a larger version.

The basic idea of this matrix is that photos that contain branding should be shared more widely under CC than photos that do not contain branding. The reason for this is that I have personally seen photos being taken from one NGO and reused on another NGOs website, which is something you don’t want to happen and is less likely if the photo contains branding.

Control distribution by controlling resolution

Of course people might still take your photos without permission, even when you have protected them with “all rights reserved”. That is why I recommend that you upload photos which you don’t want to share through CC with a comparatively low resolution such as 1024 x 786. At the same time, you should always include a sentence beneath each photo saying that higher resolution versions can be requested by email.

Make absolutely sure you have all rights

A word on rights: Images shot by staff or by consultants working for an NGO are normally the property of the organization, so you can do what you want with them – check this with your photo department or media unit. However, if you buy or accept photos for free from anyone who does not work for you, make sure that he gives you explicit permission to use the photos and distribute them under creative commons license in writing. I know of an organization that received photos for free after the Tsunami, shared them with the media (not even under creative commons license) and was later sued for royalties.

My new project: “How to choose a content management system – the non-profit guide”

Timo — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:59:42 +0000

The perfect wine to drink while looking for a new CMS (Photo: quinn.anya)

Over the last few years I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in major web relaunch and content management (CMS) projects. In addition, I spent a lot of time listening to the woes of colleagues in other organizations, exchanging experiences and discussing ideas how to select the best CMS.

Over the next couple of months I’m planning to write a document (maybe just a PDF, maybe an e-book) that could help NGOs, non-profits and international organizations to select web content management systems as part of a web relaunch.

The document will not focus on individual systems, but rather on a method how to define your needs and then select a system, as well as the most common pitfalls, such as the perils of content migration or integrating your CMS with you design.

If you have experience with CMS selection/implementation and are interested in contributing to the guide, I would love to hear from you.

Please use the comment section below or the contact form to get in touch with me.

A call for investing into information management in aidwork

Timo — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:58:14 +0000

I think of information management a bit like of logistics: You don’t notice it, if it works smoothly; but it has a massive impact if it doesn’t work properly. But, unlike with logistics, many people are so used to information management being crap, that they think that it cannot be improved. Let me tell you: good information management is possible, it’s not even difficult, and it can do lots to improve humanitarian aid.

The difference between data and information

Data or information?

In my experience one of the biggest problems is that people don’t understand the difference between collecting data and analysing information. When you talk to a beneficiary, fill out a form and then archive that form somewhere, then you have collected data. However, that data only turns into useful information once you have entered it into a database or spreadsheet so that you can filter, sort, aggregate or calculate data.

If you work for a big retailer, you might think that this is obvious. However, in the humanitarian aid industry it sadly is not.

Three examples:

An organization working with refugees announced during a meeting that they would relocate between 2,000 and 4,000 people from host communities to a refugee camp during the next few weeks. Another organization that is in charge of providing food to that camp, said that they’d need to have a more precise number so that they know how many sacks of rice to buy. However, in the rush of the crisis the first organization had only registered heads of household and was not sure how many people were part of each household.
Different meeting, different actors, similar issue: Somebody announced that 458 people would be relocated to a refugee camp in the coming week. Someone working for a an education agency asked, how many of these would be children for whom schooling would have to be provided. The first organization was not able to provide that information since, while they had captured the age during registration on paper, they had only entered “minor” or “adult” into their database.
A while age I got to work with a big Excel spreadsheet that contained data of people who had been registered. Many of these people had two or three names (Last name, Middle name, First name), all of which were entered into a single cell called “Name” in the spreadsheet. However, people would sometimes give their last name first, and another time say their first name first, making it difficult to find them in the list. This problem was made worse by the fact that many of the people were illiterate so spellings might differ slightly from one time to the next. Once we put each name into a separate field, it was much easier to find even the ones that were misspelled because at least one of the three names would normally be consistently spelled and then you could simply scan the list of remaining names for phonetic matches.

Granularity and structure of information

I realize that collecting data during an emergency is a very challenging task. However, the three issues I described are not about an inability to collect data, they are about a lack of knowledge how to treat data properly so that you can use it to inform your decisions. In other words: they are examples of bad information management.

One frequent answer to this is “True, but we didn’t think about that in the beginning.” Well, that is exactly why you need to have professional, experienced information managers!

Particularly during the first phase of an emergency, organizations should invest in people who can help them structure the information they need in such a way that it is collected and entered in a useful way. This is something that can even be done by consultants on short-term contracts. Then, once the structure is in place, other (less expensive) people can enter data into those spreadsheets or databases and programme people can use the information as a tool.

Data confidence and errors

The second big challenge is to ensure that the data is entered correctly and stays correct. Everyone makes mistakes, particularly when you have a mind-boggling boring job like entering a list of thousands of names or dates of birth into a spreadsheet. One of the most efficient ways to prevent data entry errors is the double entry method. This means that everything is entered twice, by different people. Once all the data is entered, you can automatically compare the two data sets and look at the differences. I know, I know … I can almost hear cash-strapped managers groan at this suggestion, but hiring two data entry clerks might be only marginally more expensive then hiring one more qualified person.

The second way to reduce errors and increase data confidence is to have programme people work with the data themselves. I’m not necessarily talking about the initial massive data entry, but of the subsequent steps. In a lot of situations, updates are simply given to a person, whose job it is to update the database. This person normally has no knowledge of the programmes or the cases and most of the time never leaves the office. So for him, the data has no context and he will happily enter things that are written down, even if they don’t make sense. On the other hand, a programme person will notice inconsistencies or even be able to suggest improvements to the database. However, that means that organizations have to invest into teaching their programme people the basics of information management so that they understand how to do things and why certain things are done a certain way.

Stop reinventing the wheel

Last but not least, I’m still amazed to see people reinvent the wheel over and over again. A lot of the data that has to be captured is the same in different emergencies, with only small adjustments being necessary to fit the specific context. However, in each emergency people seem to start from scratch and build their databases and spreadsheets as they go.

It should be the role of the global cluster leads to provide standardized information management tools that can be reused and adapted. And while some clusters are already doing this, it is still too few and in the cases where the clusters do provide these tools, a lot of organizations are not aware of them – which again calls for an experienced information manager who knows where to find these tools and how to use them.

I know that hiring people with laptops and spreadsheets is not as sexy as buying trucks or as photogenic as handing out food to beneficiaries. But I am convinced that if we are serious about being efficient and about using the money that we have been given to the greatest advantage of the beneficiaries, we need to professionalize and invest into information management. The people who can do that job already exist, you just need to have to the will to find the budget and hire them. You programmes will improve because of it.

Case study: social media staff guidelines for the Red Cross Red Crescent

Timo — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:27:19 +0000

A while ago I posed the social media staff guidelines that I created for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Since then, I have been asked by a few organizations to talk about the process of getting there. It seems that more and more organizations see the need and usefulness of having such a document.

Below you find a presentation I have given on two occasions on that topic. At the bottom of my previous post you can also download the social media staff guidelines.

I decided to use Camtasia this time to create a presentation that includes the audio, which is why it’s embedded as a YouTube video. Of course you can also download it from Slideshare as powerpoint without my explanations.

I hope you find it useful and please tell me what you think.

Flickr for non-profits – 8 lessons learned

Timo — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:45:11 +0000

I have been using Flickr for about two years to increase visibility of the work of Red Cross Red Crescent. Today, I’d like to share some of the lessons I’ve learned.

Why Flickr?

I believe that most non-profits spend too much time preaching to the choir. Flickr is a great website to show what your organization is doing or why it is doing it to people whom you haven’t reached so far.

1. Know your audience

Quality is important

A large group of Flickr users is really passionate about photography. A second important group is people who are looking for free stock photos that they can use in presentations etc. Both groups have in common that they are looking for high quality photos. Respect that and be extremely critical about which photos you share. I ask myself every time “Could this photo be on a postcard or on the front page of a newspaper?” and try to post only those photos that meet this standard. Please note: photos of conferences or internal meetings never meet that standard.

2. Newsworthiness beats quality

This photo attracted 15,000 views - most of them in the fist 24 hours.

The only time when you can forget about quality and simply post whatever you have is when you have fresh, exclusive photos from a breaking news event: when cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar in May 2008, we were the only organization that had current photos from the affected areas during the first few days. As a result, the photos attracted more than 70,000 views in 48 hours.

Update: Please read this post about the impact we had with Flickr after the Haiti earthquake.

To a large degree this was because Yahoo! decided to link to them directly from their news homepage, but I’ve have seen similar, smaller surges when we had photos from other, hard to reach areas. Timing is essential for these kind of photos: to be successful you have to be lucky and fast. Once Reuters and AP get their photographers on location, interest in your less-than perfect pictures will wane fast.

3. Less is more

On Flickr, if someone likes your photos, he can add you as a “contact”. This means that his personal profile page will show your latest photos. However, it will only load a maximum of five photos. I have found that there is no significant difference in extra traffic beyond five photos. Unless the photos are urgent, you will gain more by spacing them out over a few days.

Tip: It seems like you can batch-upload and prepare all photos at once as long as you keep them “private”. I think that the trigger for showing up in your contact’s photo streams is not “last uploaded” but “latest photos that have been made visible.” In other words: I might upload 16 photos at once but then switch them from “private” to “public” four or five at a time over the next days.

4. Understand what you want to achieve

Flickr is not a good tool to fundraise or even to drive traffic to your site. Most people will stay on Flickr and not make that extra click to your donations-form or your site. This can make it difficult to measure impact. I consider Flickr to be a valuable tool to showcase the work of the organization and to increase visibility, particularly with people we normally can’t reach.

In addition, National and local Red Cross Red Crescent societies and branches can take our photo feed (through RSS or the API) to highlight the international work of the organization on their websites without any extra work on their part. I think this a good idea for any non-profit or NGO that has branches.

5. Groups, groups, groups

Almost every time I hear someone complaining that his/her Flickr stream doesn’t attract enough people, the reason is that they are not using groups. Think about it: most people don’t go to Flickr with the intention of seeing your photos. Most of them want to see photos that have a certain topic and it is in these topical groups that you find your audience. So, if you are an animal-rights organization, upload those puppy-photos to one of the many “dogs” group. If you work in DRC, upload your photos to the “Congo” group etc. I normally add each of our photos to at least ten groups.

Tip: Be on topic, but be different. You want your photos to stand out from the crowd so try to surprise people. Adding Tsunami photos to a “beautiful beaches” group or photos of malnourished children to “children portraits” is absolutely acceptable and can be very effective. Just make sure that they fall within the topic of the group.

6. Appreciate the work of others

You should also consider creating your own group and ask others to contribute to it. As administrator of a group you’ll see a new comment-button under all photos on Flickr, which makes it very easy for you to ask others to add their photo to your group. Ideally this will make them join your group and become a regular visitor and/or contributor. As the size of your group grows it becomes more and more likely that others will be exposed to your issues.

7. Flickr needs attention

I find that traffic to our photo stream falls very rapidly once I haven’t uploaded anything for a few days. Each time I let that happen, I slowly have to work the traffic back up from 40-50/day to 500-600/day, which is realistic for us outside of newsworthy events. This normally takes four or five uploads or about a week.

8. Use creative commons licenses – with care

A good example of the kind of photo to which we assign creative commons licenses. The photo shows our work and the branding is subtle.

I’m a big fan of creative commons licensing and believe that you should license your photos on Flickr accordingly, if you have all the necessary rights. The biggest advantage is that it allows people to spread your message without any hassle on their part. It also means that your photos show up when someone is looking for CC-licensed material using Flickr’s or Google’s image search. However, the important thing is to only license photos under CC that actually contain your message.

You should also think about how you would feel about seeing your photos in a competitor’s annual report. In our case that means that I only apply a CC license to photos that contain a visible red cross or red crescent emblem. Basically I don’t want another organization to be able to use one of our non-branded photos without having to ask for permission first. I am far more flexible when it comes to photos that are branded, since it is in our interest that these photos are shared as widely as possible.

What I’m missing

What I find disappointing about Flickr is the lack of integration with Facebook. There are a number of apps, but none of them do what I want. What I’d like to see is something akin to the existing “Blog this” feature in Flickr that would allow me to selective add photos to the album of our Facebook page. I’m also missing a “share this” button that would allow visitors of our photostream to post a link and a thumbnail to their own Facebook news feed.