There has been a lot of discussion over the past year regarding copyrights, violation of copyrights, licensing fees and related matters. I've been thinking about it and I'd like to take you through a bit of a logic flow.

Back in the dark ages -- the 1970s and 1980s -- copyrights and image licensing fees were pretty simple and straightforward to figure out: the greater the reach of the media in which the image was to be used, the higher the licensing fee. If you were buying an image for use in Time magazine, you paid more for it than if you were using it for a brochure for the local florist. Simple. Logical.

Then in the mid-1990s, things started to get both more complicated and more illogical. The computer started to become a primary medium for receiving information and the internet started to become a primary advertising medium.

Ah, yes, the internet where everyone with a computer, everywhere in the world can reach your website any time of the day or night. Logic would tell us that this type of unparalleled reach would result in the highest licensing fees. But logic would be wrong. Images and other intellectual property that is licensed for use on the internet has the lowest fees and, most of the time, is provided (or taken) for free.

So how does that effect us? Well, let me talk about my business which is Professional Dog Show Photographer. My primary product is an 8X10 color print. Why? Tradition. That's been the primary product of dog show photographers for as long as I can remember. I sell my primary product for $25 and often give away a low-rez file for web use to those who buy the print.

What's wrong with that? Well, most people don't really want the print. They want the web file. And they think it should be for free. That's why they sit behind me when I'm shooting and take their own digital photos to put on their websites. They don't think that's stealing. They think it's meeting their needs which I'm not. Folks buy my prints so they can scan them and put the images on their websites. They really don't understand when I tell them my copyright doesn't include that usage. They've always done it to other photographers. They expect to be able to do it with any photographer.

Against this mentality we continue to rave about copyrights, usage fees, post-event sales that we never get, etc. Maybe -- just maybe -- we're the ones that are out of tune with what the marketplace is telling us.

While I've been a professional photographer for over 30 years, I've made most of my living as a marketing/advertising guy. In that role, I've always believed that you listen to what the marketplace is telling you and provide it. It's a simple philosophy but it's not always simple or easy to do. The marketplace is telling us they want files. They want low-rez files for their websites and they want hi-rez files so they can make as many low-cost prints as they need. They have access to the same labs we use and they certainly don't need to pay our markup.

If we get away from the antiquated belief that our files are really the equivalent of digital negatives, then we can consider whether or not it makes sense to sell our files at a value level that let's us make money. And what is that level? I'm not sure, frankly. If you consider that we cut down on most if not all of our processing and distribution expenses, then how much do we have to earn to make the front-end of the process profitable. $50 per file? $100 per file? Remember, we'd be providing them with unlimited usage rights.

The gotcha in all of this is, of course, what price would the marketplace bear. It's well and good for me to say that the value of unlimited usage of my images is $100 per image but if the marketplace is only willing to pay $25, then I'm not going to make many sales at my pricing level. But, for the sake of discussion, let's assume that there is a pricing level that works both for me and the market.

I'm interested in what folks on this forum think about this "radical" change in perspective. The trigger for this rumination is the fact that none of us can afford the time, energy and money it will take to legislate our copyrights under the mentality that a print is a print; a file is a file; one use is only one use. Our buyers don't think that way. Maybe it's time for us to change the way we think.

Jim