Features

Six UC Berkeley student photographers say they may sue the Daily Californian for copyright infringement after the independent student-run paper severed ties with them for refusing to sign away all future rights to their pictures. 

“Student newspapers shouldn’t treat students this way,” said UC School of Journalism student David Krantz, who refused to comply with the paper’s demands. “If we’re volunteering time, energy and experience we expect to retain our copyrights.” 

A copyright guarantees freelance photographers ownership of their pictures so that after the picture runs in a newspaper, they can sell it to a different publication. 

Freelancers traditionally have sold one-time use rights to their photos, although some publishers have demanded all domestic rights and others have demanded both domestic and foreign rights. 

“The first golden rule to stay in business as a freelance photographer is: Keep your copyright,” said Dan Krauss, a freelance photographer and former UC Berkeley student who has resold pictures that previously ran in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. 

But Daily Californian attorney Rachel Matteo-Boehn insisted that the photographers are not freelancers, but staffers, and staff photos traditionally are the property of the paper. 

In July, the Daily Californian ordered all photographers to sign right-to-hire contracts, effectively making the paper the sole owner of all pictures taken on assignment—which the paper then stores on compact discs.  

The Daily Californian promised to grant photographers use of the pictures for portfolios, but insisted on keeping the copyright. 

Most photographers complied, but Krantz and the other five refused, insisting that they were freelancers, and should be able to retain their copyright privileges. 

Staff photographers typically agree to surrender ownership of their pictures in return for a steady salary, health benefits, and equipment. Photographers for the nonprofit Daily Californian shoot digital images, either with the paper’s cameras or their own, and are paid according to a sliding scale that tops out at $11 per picture. 

“Student papers worked in the past because there’s pretty much been an understanding: ‘Hey, here’s free labor, in exchange we get published,’” said Jigar Mehta, also a student at the School of Journalism. “But it’s unacceptable asking us to volunteer our time and labor and then also asking for our copyrights.” 

But when it comes to copyrights, professional freelancers warn that the Daily Californian’s policy is quickly becoming the rule, not the exception, in an era of increasing media consolidation. 

“In the past few years more and more newspapers have started demanding exclusive rights from freelancers,” said Mark Loundy of the National Press Photographers Association. “It’s a threat to the very existence of freelance photography as a profession.” 

The Associated Press started the trend several years ago, but since a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Tasini vs. the New York Times, more papers have followed suit. 

In its 7-2 decision, the justices held that fees paid to freelance reporter Jonathan Tasini covered only the printed article, not different forms of the stories the Times offered to computerized databases like LexisNexus. 

The ruling benefited Tasini, but ultimately hurt freelancers. Publishers simply rewrote contracts demanding more copyright privileges, said Victor Pearlman, general counsel for the American Society of Media Photographers. 

“Between the Tasini decision and the consolidation in ownership of the media, publishers are bargaining from a position of strength and asking for more rights.” 

They are not offering more money however. The going rate for a photograph from a major daily is $200 - $350, unchanged from 20 years go, Loundy said. 

He added that large newspaper chains often don’t have uniform policies on copyrights, and many newspapers often demand copyrights initially but then relent if the photographer rebuffs them. 

Locally, ANG—publisher of the Oakland Tribune and other Bay Area dailies—said they don’t demand all-inclusive copyrights, nor does the Daily Planet. The Contra Costa Times, owned by Knight Ridder Inc. said they use only staff photographers in the Bay Area.  

Renowned freelance photographers have taken up the cause of the UC Berkeley six, fearing that if college newspapers demand copyrights, young photographers will learn to accept the same demands from future employers. 

“It’s obscenely wrong in the context of an educational setting,” said Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Rick Rickman. “A college newspaper is the place to educate people, not to give away their property.” 

The students insist the stalemate has hurt them more than the paper. “There’s always a new crop of people who are hungry to see their name in a byline,” Mehta said. “For us the Daily Cal is one of the few consistent jobs in town. It makes it harder when you’re trying to collect clips for a portfolio.” 

Their attorney, Barbara Friedman of San Francisco’s Bingham and McCutchen law firm, said she had offered the paper a host of compromises but none proved satisfactory. “I said give me your dream list—electronic rights, database rights. We’ll give you non-exclusive rights for all time—just don’t take the copyright.” 

But Matteo-Boehn said the offers would cause logistical headaches for the paper that has to manage its files on a tight budget. “If a newspaper has different deals with its photographers it makes it impossible to function.” 

She added that the contract offered to photographers included a licensing agreement that she believes the paper would interpret to allow photographers a cut from any future sales. The Daily Californian issued a statement on the dispute, but would not answer questions about the licensing agreement. 

A student-initiated lawsuit would seek to affirm ownership of the thousands of pictures they have shot for the Daily Californian before the contract flap. Though neither Krantz nor Mehta have resold any of the pictures, they insist those pictures—stored at the paper’s office—belong to them. Matteo-Boehn disagreed saying, “It has always been the policy of the Daily Californian that such materials are owned by the Daily Californian.” 

“The Daily Californian offers students a great deal of opportunity, but they need to be able to manage their facilities and still fulfill their mission as a training paper,” Matteo-Boehn said. 

“If [the students] feel like it’s a bad deal they can market themselves in other places.”