It was with great sadness that we at BAPLA read the latest post on the fotoLibra blog, a blog that was full of misconceptions that led to many inaccurate statements. Due to the potentially destructive and libellous accusations, BAPLA is forced to respond to reassure members and the industry that fotoLibra is completely mistaken in its perception of BAPLA’s future plans.

The blog accuses BAPLA of inventing fotoLibra, of stealing their business model and setting up in competition with them. So what is the fotoLibra model that has been stolen? I quote from the blog “the concept of fotoLibra was to provide a platform for any photographer to make money selling his pictures.”

Let us now look at the aims of the BAPLA Academy and compare the two. The BAPLA Academy is a new public membership aiming to attract a group of people keen on photography, who can access and unlock skills from within the BAPLA membership to help them improve as photographers (through pod-casts, seminars, newsletters, events and portfolio reviews etc. Most definitely not the licensing of images). They will also have access to their own Academy website, where through monthly competitions judged by BAPLA members, they can display their images on a special gallery on the home page. Results of the competitions will be made available to BAPLA picture libraries so they can see the best work which they can assess for potential contributors.

An incidental part of having this material online is to make the images available for the public to purchase these images as prints or selective gifts such as mugs and mouse mats. With the ease of doing such a thing in today’s digital environment, it is short-sighted not to offer such a facility. However, this small part of the whole has been focussed upon by fotoLibra, seen as a threat and blown out of all proportion. This is the only part of the BAPLA Academy which they seem to have registered; the sale of prints to the public. This is not licensing images, simply an add on service as it is possible and a common feature available on many, many websites both commercial and non-commercial. Though contributors will get a small amount of revenue should anything sell, this is incidental to the whole and the Academy cannot be viewed as a vehicle for selling pictures and bears no comparison to fotoLibra in that.

One can clearly see that comparing the two models, they are completely different and the Academy is not set up in competition. In fact, the whole purpose behind the BAPLA Academy is to involve members in running events and seminars and passing on their skills, which would give members like fotoLibra direct access to potential new contributors who wanted to make money from their photography. As fotoLibra stated at the AGM, BAPLA has a far greater reach than they do, and so should be able to attract a far bigger pool of interested photographers to whom fotoLibra can then market their services. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone interested in photography being a member of the BAPLA Academy and fotoLibra, should they so choose, or indeed, working with other BAPLA members with similar business plans who offer the same services as fotoLibra.

BAPLA’s objective is to develop a level playing field on which all our members can thrive. As a trade association, BAPLA is constantly looking for new ways to build its profile and engage with new people, but certainly not at the expense of one of its members. We are committed to protecting the rights of the imaging industry and by spreading our name further afield, we are aiming to add further credibility to our association to help our lobbying on the key issues affecting our industry right now. We are looking to create opportunities to spread our copyright education programme and access students to try and encourage a new generation into our industry.

At an industry level, BAPLA has to look beyond the day to day businesses of our members and plan for the future. In the current economic and new digital environment this means our thinking needs to be creative and different. This means change, and change is never popular, but with the right foundations from the past, the right changes are necessary. The BAPLA board is made up of industry professionals with a huge amount of experience from all areas of both picture libraries and the industry itself. With the greatest of respect, the considered opinions and ideas of this group of people who have been elected to lead the industry forward, should not be dismissed lightly. Before the blog was posted, we invited fotoLibra to discussions to fill them in on all the facts, as we were sure that once they comprehended what the BAPLA Academy actually was, they would see it as an excellent business opportunity, not a threat. That invitation still stands.