Victoria Nece

So, who actually reads stock photo license agreements?

Saturday, 09. 6. 2008  –  Category: News

Apparently not political campaigns.

But I do. This probably makes me a huge dork, but when you work on things for national broadcast, not being sued is usually a plus. And after some work I did designing labels for a DVD about AIDS in America, I became quite familiar with the fun, exciting world of licensing royalty-free stock photos. Mainly, the fact that yes, even if you pay for them, you can’t use them for absolutely anything. It’s understandable, particularly with a subject like AIDS. After all, you might imply that the models in the images had the disease.

Now, there’s been a lot of talk today about the mysterious building looming behind McCain for part of his acceptance speech. (I particularly enjoyed the snarky “must be one of his seven houses!” assumptions. It’s actually Walter Reed Middle School in California.)

But I find a less-noticed story much more interesting: that a lot of the stills used in his introductory video aren’t actually pictures of supporters, but generic images purchased from iStockphoto. I will trust that the convention planners paid for the proper license fees for broadcasting. But I’m not so sure they read the fine print: iStockphoto’s content license agreement states that

4. Standard License Prohibitions
7. use or display any Content that features a model or person in a manner that (i) would lead a reasonable person to think that such person uses or personally endorses any business, product, service, cause, association or other endeavour; or (ii) that depicts such person in a potentially sensitive subject matter, including, but not limited to mental and physical health issues, social issues, sexual or implied sexual activity or preferences, substance abuse, crime, physical or mental abuse or ailments, or any other subject matter that would be reasonably likely to be offensive or unflattering to …