When I was young, my father did all kinds of tinkering and fix it up projects. And as an excellent dad should, he encouraged me to step in and work right along side of him. His encouragement to mow the grass still makes me wonder if these teaching moments might have been a bit self-serving, but thats a story for a different day.
Today I am reminded of the projects we built or fixed and how he showed me the value of doing good work. I can still hear the words of my father echoing from deep in those formative years of childhood, "do it right or don't do it at all". He was dead on of course, slapping some half-baked project together would never last in woodworking, home repair or even today in advertising.
My validation for this lesson came this morning when my rep from Getty Images® left me a voicemail. They had received a hit on their image licensing web crawler and it showed that an image used in the Fallout online portfolio was unlicensed. While I probably should fear the fact that Getty Images® has a CIA like web crawling search spider, I really never broke a sweat because I remembered that I always operate with "do it right or don't do it at all" when it comes to licensing and using images for client work. So after a 5 minute conversation with my very nice sales rep, Marry, sure enough they found it licensed to the client. After she updated their records she proceeded to explain how the process works and then try to sell me more images plus video and music and ... yeah she was doing her job.
Of course now I am left to wonder, since the image that started all of this hasn't been in the online portfolio for a long time how much should I fear the big-brother Getty Images® licensing terminator? For some agencies (nameless we shall leave them) this should strike some serious fear. Because in this industry folks know what places don't care about doing things right. Its a very small community of creatives and we all know who operates without regard to licensing. Will stories like this make agencies grow up and realize that it time to respect the works of others? Or will they keep on running rogue until they get busted?
Clients of the world should also take this note as a bit of warning. The next time you think you can use some overseas cheapie firm or some crazy deal, make sure it is really worth it. Because the licensing and copy-write protection terminator doesn't sleep, he doesn't need food and will never stop hunting. So you can bet that if you do choose that path, some day the work and the images you stole will come back to haunt you.
Getty Images® is a registered trademark of Getty Images Incorporated all rights reserved. This is not a paid endorsement for Getty Images® and we did not pay to use the name Getty Images® or any likeness thereof. The Getty Images® Licensing Terminator is probably a registered trademark of somebody else so don't shoot us.