Hi all, I have started writing a blog on fair trade images and licenses, and I just found out Pilens also mentioned fair trade images on his website. Basically Symbiostock is working, connecting brainwaves. 

But what if we start replacing royalty free with fair trade? Maybe we can start a new wave, a new terminology. Fair trade meaning, 100% royalty for the artist as it should be.

We can label our site fair trade sites with fair trade licenses  or fair trade stock images.

Thoughts?

Another point is SEO, will it have a negative effect?

We can't know how far we can get the term "fair trade license" out there unless we try.

Could be risky for SEO but I have removed any mentioning of RF on my site a while ago. I hope the term "stock photo" is still SEO relevant enough.
I also have what I call a "premium collection" on my site, which is exclusively there and nowhere else. I think it is worth taking the risk of losing out on some micro income in order to try making SY fly.

Actually, regarding recent news from IS, BS, 123rf...  (you name it) I find it much more risky to continue depending on micros alone.

It is nice idea!

Regarding the SEO impact.
I dare to say that removal of royalty-free words will have minimal negative impact on SEO (if any).

Most of image buyers search for images in external search engines using keywords and phrases describing images they are looking for. Such as if buyers are looking for images of Orava castle they simply type Orava castle, or Orava castle images/photos, or similar phrase.

How about Royalty Fair instead of Royalty Free?

Good stuff guys,

These photographers direct, do they have copyright to the phrase fair trade images, or do they have an organisation that you have to part of to claim your images are fair trade? Like a certificate your fridge is green, its need to fulfill certain criteria.

If they dont have anything official registered we can call what we do what we want, no?

I don't think they have any control over 'fair trade' - like 'royalty free', you can define it how you want

there a fairtrade org -- http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/resources/photo_library/

I like this idea a lot.  It is yet another way to be different from the big boys.... I think I will work on putting it to work on my site.

Love the Fair Trade idea!  First thought tho is how would one go about communicating the license length?  A fair trade image could be either RF or RM.  Maybe refer to it as Fair Trade RF or Fair Trade RM?  This would keep the benefit of the the well known terms RF and RM (as well as any seo benefits related to those terms).  After all, fair trade coffee is still "coffee" but by adding the "Fair Trade" designation it further distinguishes and defines it.

Bryan

I guess I don't know about renaming the RF license (I'm OK with it as is), but I was looking for some kind of universal fair trade, artist owned or local symbol at one time to display on my site. I couldn't find a universal standard for that though, so I abandoned the idea.

I guess it wouldn't be a bad idea to develop the concept from scratch though. Not that I am volunteering for the job. I'm just throwing the idea out there. I'd definitely be willing to help, but it really depends on the details.

Edit: I guess if nothing else, it can be some kind of link in link out organization.

I sort of like the idea of getting away from terminologies/ideas involving the word "free"

You've got a point there Leo.  I'd also kind of like to get away from the use forever idea.  Give users a good long time frame, maybe 5 years but not forever.  I also think this would be a good way for each of us to limit our liability a bit if we ever ran afoul of any IP rights.  By limiting image use to 5, 7 or even 10 years versus "forever" we would be able to ultimately remove an image from the market thereby limiting potential damages.

"Royalty Free" is a very unfortunate term for artists trying to sell license their work. It not only implies "Freebie" it is also practically un-translate-able into any language other than English. If you know another language just try one of those free online translation tools for a good laugh.

I hope that we can come up with some other word (even if the license terms are still effectively RF) just to raise awareness for the fair trade concept of selling direct.

I simply refuse to believe that most image buyers don't care about us image producers and are happy with feeding greedy bloodsuckers middlemen. I believe given a powerful image search within a big enough collection, smooth, fast and reliable payment/download transaction and a good overall experience (think: farmers market) it will be easy to win image buyers for fair trade and using SY.

The hard part is providing such a well-functioning system and that "woow-that-was-easy-to-find-and-license-just-the-right-image-I-wanted" buyer experience. Well, I guess we are working on it

A few ideas for our Fair Trade sites for those who want to use the term to try and get somewhere between RF and totally RM

No Royalty free mention on the site only Fair Trade
A fixed term of use - I would think 2 years would be enough  because
books  - if they are being reprinted then they are selling well so can afford to buy again
websites - are usually updated within this time
why should anyone be able to pay a few pounds for an image and be able to use it for whatever they like for forever more? 

Any other thoughts from those who would like to use a Fairtrade or FairUse licence (think one word is better so that the initials don't stand for anything else)

Guys, the last bit I need to change, but cant find where. Is that on the PHP file?