Ellice: Bit of a delay in responding to this question (which I just found in a desperate email clean-out). Sorry.
Pricing per use is really more of a market tradition than a "legal call". It's the way the stock photo business always worked, and museums adopted it. It was a legitimate and useful model, and the first talk I ever gave at an MCN conference was about the added value inherent in museum photography with authoritative information delivery (the word metadata hadn't been invented yet). The point being, our photographs were worth paying (more) for. As to the other question you bring up, " we still will want to charge a fee to recoup at least some of our costs to image and catalog the material," I've always pointed out that there is actually no difference in the cost to us of delivering an image to a non-profit client or a for-profit client. (In fact, non-profit clients often require more specific, personal, and time-and-staff-consuming work. A commercial client's request can often be zapped off in minutes. Logically, then, non-profits should be charged more, not less.) So if you want to base your pricing on cost recovery, you probably need to charge everyone the same. You can drop charges for "rights" for specific uses; what you want is compensation for the product (which is a result of image creation, management, authoritative metadata, and file delivery). Much simpler, no arguments about the right to charge for "rights," or whether someone's book on mid-nineteenth century pornography is "educational" or not. And then there are always the exceptions, institutional discretion, barters with other museum image providers, etc. Good luck! Amalyah Keshet Head of Image Resources and Copyright Management The Israel Museum, Jerusalem -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Ellice Engdahl Sent: 19 March, 2015 3:09 PM To: mcn-l@mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] Tiered pricing for high-res image files without asking about use Hi all, We're investigating adding automated ecommerce delivery of high-res images as part of an overhaul of our digital collections website. As part of this process, we're hoping to revise our current practices for image delivery, moving away from asking about potential end use (we want to avoid making a legal call on how people use our material). However, we still will want to charge a fee to recoup at least some of our costs to image and catalog the material, and we'd like to make these fees fair to potential users (e.g. charging less to nonprofits than for-profits, making fees very minimal for personal use, etc.). The examples I've been able to find online for museum image delivery tier the pricing based on the end use (x for print run under 5,000, y for print run over 5,000, z for web use, etc.), which we'd like to avoid. Question: Are others delivering image files (online or off) without asking the requestor about potential use, and if so, would you be willing to share your fee structure-particularly if it's tiered? Thanks! ................................................. Gain Perspective. Get Inspired. Make History. Ellice Engdahl, PMP Digital Collections & Content Manager P: 313.982.6005 E: elli...@thehenryford.org www.thehenryford.org ................................................. The Henry Ford 20900 Oakwood Boulevard Dearborn, MI 48124 _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://mcn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/
