No need here to recount the former glory of Sygma.\u00a0 Participants in the photojournalism aspect of the industry have known for years that Sygma existed in name only.\u00a0 Many trace the commencement of the demise to the acquisition of Sygma by Corbis.<\/p>\n
We note in the previous Act 1, the passing\/closing\/demise of Sygma as described by Corbis.\u00a0 Over the last dozen years or so there have been numerous court cases in America and France regarding missing imagery (obliquely referenced by the Corbis statement) including at least one which had nothing whatever to do with Sygma and everything to do with Corbis – Chris Usher v. Corbis, 12,000 images unaccounted for and Corbis held negligent.\u00a0 Untold hundreds of thousands of analogue images remain missing and more than one court has held that Corbis systems for tracking imagery “were wholly inadequate”.\u00a0 The Corbis obituary refers to some sort of winding down of the Sygma operation, which presumably includes its vast French archives.<\/p>\n
So the following questions are begged: Will any of the missing images “now” be found and returned to their rightful owners?\u00a0 Will Corbis finally scour the drawers and fully, finally and accurately account for the millions of images in Sygma’s possession, custody and control?\u00a0 Will images belonging to long dead shooters be returned to their respective estates or heirs?\u00a0 What will happen to the images in Corbis’ possession created and owned by those who ceased long ago being Corbis and\/or Sygma contributors?\u00a0 What if any system will be in place to track down the identity of creators whose names (but not addresses) routinely appeared on slide mounts?<\/p>\n
Sygma was acquired by Corbis, which has run that operation for well over a decade.\u00a0 The Corbis statement seems to lay all blame on Sygma and its former employees without ever accepting responsibility for the manner in which Corbis acquired Sygma, tracked (or not) its images and licensed out “Sygma” imagery.\u00a0 One is intentionally left wondering whether Corbis accepts any responsibility for the demise of Sygma.\u00a0 The answer is contained in the Corbis statement.<\/p>\n
One final note – Corbis now openly admits to Sygma’s “lax” inventory procedures.\u00a0 It fails to advise that such fact now openly admitted was hotly contested and vehemently denied by Corbis in several litigations brought in (at least) the Federal and State courts of New York.\u00a0 Perhaps if Corbis had admitted to such\u00a0 “lax procedures” or as two judges determined the “wholly inadequate tracking” of images, it would not have had to have spent the millions of dollars in legal fees it\u00a0bemoans in its statement.\u00a0 The announcement of this “liquidation” comes on the heals of an adverse decisions (discussed elsewhere\u00a0on this blog) concerning Corbis’ flawed system of mass copyright registrations and a decision in the French Courts\u00a0finding Corbis culpable for missing imagery.\u00a0 We do not know whether this liquidation is linked to the sizable Aubert judgment or not.<\/p>\n
Do not rely on our interpretations of events.\u00a0 Read the court decisions and statements on your own.\u00a0\u00a0Employ logic<\/strong> when deciding which stock agency if any<\/strong> to place your work with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No need here to recount the former glory of Sygma.\u00a0 Participants in the photojournalism aspect of the industry have known for years that Sygma existed in name only.\u00a0 Many trace the commencement of the demise to the acquisition of Sygma by Corbis. We note in the previous Act 1, the passing\/closing\/demise of Sygma as described […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15,21,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright-info","category-legal","category-stock-photography","category-you-cant-make-this-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}