I’m all for it. Even aside from the total sense it makes to move away from the RF name in order to further establish this new direct-buying model, the RF term itself was always terrible. It rarely ever made any sense to customers who first encountered the term. The ambiguous term could often leave someone thinking, “What does it mean? Is the image free? Is it different than other images that I have to pay a royalty to use? I don’t get it…”

The downside to coining a new term is that there are actually many people who do know exactly what RF means and what it includes when being used as the licensing model for images, and so creating a new license term might add a bit of confusion to things. But if done right, any new licensing term should adequately describe in its name exactly what it entails, giving it a leg up on the vague term “royalty-free”. Some ideas about what this new license term could be have already been floating around the microstock community. They include license terms such as “One-Time Payment”, “Fair Trade License”, and “NFR (No Further Royalty)” licensing.

Personally I think the right term is some hybrid of those already being discussed, something that mixes a bit of the “one-time payment” idea with the “direct-buying” notion. Maybe “One-Time Direct” licensing or something to that effect.

In any case, I hope this idea stays afloat. The time is right for a little shake-up in the stock world, amidst all of the royalty rate cuts and rights grabbing as the big companies find new and ever inventive ways to screw over artists. All stock artists can benefit from an increased understanding among the people who license our work that there is more than one way to do this, and that it can be done to everyone’s advantage in ways that go beyond the traditional business models and licensing terms that we’ve grown accustomed to.

These conversations don’t always result in a sale or a signed contract. And in some cases, the intended conversation can turn into an angry mod scene very quickly. Nikon, the famed camera equipment manufacturer, learned this the hard way. On September 28th, the following message appeared on the Nikon Facebook page:

So, according to Nikon, talent is meaningless in photography, and really it’s all about the gear you use. Ouch.

Obviously this didn’t sit well with many photographers, including many professionals who make their living off of their photographic skill and talent and happen to do it with a Nikon camera in their hands. About 3,500 comments appeared under that post over a 24 hour period, most expressing disappointment with Nikon for making such a foolish and offensive statement. Some even suggested that equipment from Nikon’s primary competitor Canon all of a sudden looked a lot more appealing.

Nikon did later issue an apology, although the angry comments continued to pour in afterwards. With just a few lines of text on a Facebook page, Nikon’s social media effort went from “good” to “holy… that’s bad.”

My guess is that this incendiary post came from someone in the company who is not a photographer and had no idea how insensitive the post was. The popular running joke in the photo world has always been the one about the person who admires an image and says to the photographer something like, “Wow, this is a great picture, you must have a really nice camera.” It’s hard to believe that anyone who has spent any amount of time around photographers would dare to make such a blatantly offensive statement to a group that includes a large number of professionals.

The lesson to be learned here is that it’s easy for the conversation in social media to turn ugly, if you let an uninformed person do the talking for your company. It is a challenge, for sure, to remain active in the social networks on a daily basis with thoughtful posts, engaging discussions, and positive commentary, but it has to be done and it needs to be handled by someone within your company that understands the product, the brand position, and most importantly, the people you are talking to.