What does Royalty Free stock licensing mean?

Royalty-free pricing means the cost of a stock photo or video is based on it's artistic and technical qualities, not the specific use. You will not have to buy any additional rights for any subsequent usage of the images or photos you purchase via Cutcaster. By selling a royalty-free photo, a photographer permits you many uses of the photo, including any alterations like, but not limited to cropping, color alterations, creating derivative work from it, etc. The photographer will always remain the copyright owner of the photo.

Promoting sustainability one image at a time.

Our friend, Mike Kahn, has launched his Green Stock Media photo site and we are really impressed not only by the site but also the issues he is tackling. Mike has been busily working away on this while also maintaining his day job for EcoIQ, a company promoting sustainability via a speakers bureau, EcoSpeakers.com, and a stock video footage agency, EcoFootage.com. We met Mike originally from EcoFootage. Mike's site is really unique because it combines great photography with excellent coverage of a wide array of environmental and sustainability issues. According to his website and from speaking with Mike, "the current emphasis is on selling high-resolution Rights Managed photographs. Some images will be sold Royalty Free."

We wish him the best of luck and look forward to helping out in any way we can. We think he is really hitting on an issue that will garner a lot of attention from publishers around the world.

What is Stock Footage and Photography?

Stock footage and photography is a set of ready video and images where you purchase the rights to use the image rather than assigning your own cameramen or photographers to shoot.

The main benefits of digital stock footage and photography include getting to see the final piece of content before you license the rights to use them and they can be licensed immediately.

Additionally, the cost for stock footage and photography, specifically Royalty Free content are much lower compared to assignment or commissioned work. This saves you the cost of hiring the model(s), photographer, location, props, art direction and editing costs.

Licensing...

So we've added a link on the right to our coming-soon page's Content Agreement. We really want to start up a discussion on the types of royalty-free and extended rights people are looking to purchase for digital media, and will try to incorporate these suggestions into the general agreement if possible. If you're a content creator or purchaser and you have a problem with how another site structures their agreement, we'd love to hear about it. Or if there's something that's just missing from another site that you really want added, we want to know about it. In either case, post a comment or drop us an email.

A New Royalty Free License

Cutcaster is attempting to create a new type of Royalty Free license and way people get more security, assurances and rights then what currently is allowed under your typical RF contract. The CC license will address the way that people can use the rights granted in the agreement and how they can request extended rights from the seller for other uses. CC knows that this can be written in less confusing language and still provide security for both parties. We want to work with our community to customize a new contract that accepts the realities of the new media licensing landscape and addresses issues for example such as usage, indemnity, archiving and access. These issues shouldn’t be something that scare or confuses people but open a frank discussion about the ways the licensing contracts can be made clearer to avoid the old issues. To often there are multiple opinions on what these RF clauses mean. Where can parts of your standard RF contract be changed? Where do you want to see changes? What changes are fair?

Please see the RF license at CC here. This will evolve only with your help.