Fairfax in legal battle to retrieve photo archive from US firm hired to digitise images
A vast trove of Australia’s photographic history sits in the hands of a US court after a company tasked with digitising Fairfax Media’s archive went into receivership.
Fairfax has filed a lawsuit in Little Rock, Arkansas, looking to recover millions of images dating back as far as the 19th Century from Rogers Photo Archive (RPA), a US company it tasked with digitising its archive two years ago which has been placed in receivership.
Under the terms of a deal signed in 2013 RPA would digitise and tag the huge archive for free, in return for the rights to sell the originals after the process had been completed.
However, it is feared whilst the digitisation and tagging process was not finished some of the originals may already have been sold by RPA after they were posted for sale on eBay.
Typical…Australias biggest media companies trying to do things on the cheap.
Just why Fairfax would send original photos to Little Rock, Arkansas to be digitised when the work could have been done here, is a question Fairfax will probably never answer. But Fairfax are very keen on sending work that should be done here over seas to be stuffed up.
“Under the terms of a deal signed in 2013 RPA would digitise and tag the huge archive for free, in return for the rights to sell the originals after the process had been completed.” – Moral of the story? Nothing is ever for free.
Can’t have cheap, fast and safe, only two of the three.
Why JPGs? Why not the RAW files from the scanner/camera used to digitse the neg/prints? honestly these guys have no clue. in a few years this will be all that is left of FFX papers so why compromise it
As a keen local historian who has personally scanned and digitised several hundred district and pioneer family images for the local history archive over the past 15 years, I am beyond Horrified that originals were sent anywhere. I have spent hours at people’s kitchen tables scanning their images so that there was no risk of losing or damaging the originals.
Shame, Fairfax, shame. Cheap useless clueless mugs.
@Lindsay. The same reason why companies use overseas call centres – cheaper costs. It’s no longer about quality of service but about doing everything at minimal expense. Most of my experiences with overseas call centres have been negative but I guess that’s what you pay for.
Yes Consumer you are right about companies doing things the cheap way. However there is a point that should be made and that is there is no reason to do something if all you end up with is a second rate job. There is nothing about digitising photos that can not be done in the office. There just might be a cost benefit in getting the detailing done overseas, but that is a big may be. From the outside just about every thing Fairfax has done about running their business looks like it is designed the reduce quality while saving money. It would have been better if they lifted quality to make money.