US singer Ariana Grande has been slammed for an ‘overreaching’ new contract that requires concert photographers to hand over copyright for images, and receive written permission before they can publish them.
Additionally, the images can only be used once by the employer for a ‘news item’ relating to the concert.
The photography agreement says ‘all rights (including all copyrights) in and to the photographs shall be owned by GrandAriTour, Inc.’, and use of the images is permitted only ‘in a single instance, solely as part of a news item relating to the Performance in the news publication of which Photographer is an employee/agent’.
The photographer must also provide, on request, a complete set of images that may be used for personal, commercial, or archival use by the company or artist.
If life wasn’t already hard enough for concert photographers, they are also required to remain within a ‘designated spot’ and shoot only during the first three songs.
Grande has gone full Taylor Swift 2015 with her photo contract, however the T-Swizzle story has a happy ending.
The American National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), joined by 15 press groups and media organisations including Associated Press and NY Times, sent a letter objecting to the photography agreement.
‘This surprising and very troubling over-reach by Grande runs counter to legal and industry standards and is anathema to core journalistic principles of the news organisations represented here,’ wrote NPPA general counsel, Mickey Osterreicher, to Grande’s representatives.
Tabloid celebrity gossip outlet, TMZ, chatted with Grande sources to discover the new photo contract is to combat ‘greedy photogs’ exploiting the singer.
Apparently a ‘few bad apples’ crossed the line with their ‘photo privileges’ by licensing images for merchandise she didn’t approve, including calendars, photo books, memorabilia.
While TMZ says this is a ‘perfectly good reason’ for the strict new photo contract, it’s unnecessarily harsh to punish all photographers and media organisations. Grande’s management is enforcing rules that go way beyond preventing the sale of a few bootlegged calendars.
TMZ was told Grande couldn’t care less about the NPPA or its silly letter, and her management is happy to distribute images captured by the in-house photographer. So long as their use is approved by the singer.
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