Dee Dee,
if the club hired and paid the photographer to take the photos and the contract agreement was that the club owned the images, then fine.

But just the opposite is true here in the US: we pay an incentive to shoot the shows and all the marketing, billing and fulfillment activity is our responsibility. We own the images and sell/lease usage rights.

And that's the way it's always been. Of course, before digital and the internet, the game was pretty clear-cut: you bought a print which the photographer had made from a negative. You never bought the negative. If you wanted to use the print for advertising, you bought another print and sent it to the publication. If you wanted to have 10 prints in your stud packages, you bought 10 reprints from the photographer. There were no websites and therefore no web usage issues. There were no scanners (at least in most homes) and therefore nobody copied the print to have additional prints made. You had negatives, prints and life was simple.

Now, life is anything but simple and files can be copied easily, prints can be scanned easily, there are websites that are primary marketing tools for selling stud services and puppies, magazines accept hi rez files for advertising. We're still selling prints but our customers want our negatives. Twenty years ago, no photographer would ever sell his negatives. But that was 20 years ago.

As for copyright law, in the US it has never gone to the person paying the bill. It goes to the person who owns the intellectual property, in this case the initial image. Maybe it's different in Canada -- almost everything is -- but I'd have to see the law before I believed it to be true.

James, things are getting more frustrating and technology has made usage rights and the enforcement of them almost an anachronism. I'm thinking of going to a small show with my computer, taking the photos, proofing them on-screen, dropping in my sign and then burning a CD with the preferred image on it. Sell it for $50 and never worry about it again. No back-end costs. No fulfillment. If you want a great print, you can order it through me but you don't have to. I think I'll test drive that at one of the small Specialties I have coming up and see if it flies. I'll let you know.

Jim