Recently I encountered a situation where I captured some aerial photography for a company with a drone where they expressed how excited they were of the captures. That always makes you happy when you can not only do but exceed expectations. They just needed some captures to integrate into its commercial that they were making so overall it seemed like it should be a smooth transition.
But what happened after was kind of interesting. The person was then telling me how he could resell this work to others and all which made him even more excited. That was odd I thought as technically he can’t do that without my permission as I am the copyright holder. I only agreed to do the work to allow them to use it in that project as an example. Even in future e-mails the person indicated that they owned the copyright which was absolutely not true.
My only thought was that they had an outdated understanding of the copyright law at least here in Canada. In the past if you hired say a photographer to take photos for you by default the client would then own the photos as an example. However, since 2012 that changed where by default the person taking the picture is by default the copyright owner. This fits in line with a lot of other creative and artistic work.
So when you hire the photographer you are basically paying for their time and not full rights for the photos. What you do have control of if it’s like say a headshot is your image and likeness. The photographer can’t just start selling your face to magazines for a profit without your permission. Likewise, they can’t do the same.
This is important as I know many times companies prey on younger artists to sign away all of their copyright ownership to them. Example, young musician that want a break and a company agrees to sign them where they own full rights to a music. Be very careful with agreements like that as you could be literally giving away a million dollar work for just $100 as an example. You should always expect something extremely substantial to even consider giving it away.