Post by William J. Clinton on Sept 2, 2004 9:33:52 GMT -5
You can now send out your Bob Dylan-related mail (or any mail you want) with fully legitimate US postage stamps carrying pictures of Bob Dylan. You've got to live in the US, of course, and it will cost you a little more -- but you can get your own, custom-designed Dylan postage now.
photo.stamps.com
lets you upload the images you've chosen, and custom design your own stamps; then it prints the stamps up professionally and sends them to you in a week to 10 days.
The initial price is $16.99 (plus $2.99 shipping) for a sheet of 20 first-class postage stamps. Now that's roughly double the cost of regular postage stamps, so you don't really want to use these for all your mailings. (The cost drops as the number you order goes up, and really, really active traders who buy 10,000 stamps at a time would pay "only" about a 40% premium.)
If you were to buy a sheets of 20 $3.85 stamps (for Priority Mail, and larger packages) the premium would only be around 20%. The upfront cost is hefty, of course, $92.98 (but that's only about half the cost of one person going to a concert at a Clear Channel arena, counting tickets, handling and convenience charges, parking, and a bottle of water or two to prevent dehydration while you're standing in line waiting to get to your seat.)
According to stamps.com, the stamps have special optical coding, so that they won't be cancelled by most USPS equipment. So your friends and trading partners can keep relatively pristine copies of your custom artwork. It would, of course, be wrong to take advantage of this feature to reuse the stamps. . . .
Stamps.com also has rules prohibiting the improper use of copyrighted images; whether using already published, common images qualifies as "fair use" isn't known. The Smoking Gun website, unfortunately, recently tested the stamps.com screening process (there are other rules about offensive images, etc.) and got a few howlers through -- one showing Ted (the Unabomber) Kaczynski, another showing the outgoing governor of NJ with a certain close personal friend -- so they may be checking things a little more closely. The high school yearbook picture, which is easy to find online, should be OK, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if a batch of 1960s pictures never had their copyrights extended under current US law.
Bill
"I am William J. Clinton, and I approve this message." #nosmileys
photo.stamps.com
lets you upload the images you've chosen, and custom design your own stamps; then it prints the stamps up professionally and sends them to you in a week to 10 days.
The initial price is $16.99 (plus $2.99 shipping) for a sheet of 20 first-class postage stamps. Now that's roughly double the cost of regular postage stamps, so you don't really want to use these for all your mailings. (The cost drops as the number you order goes up, and really, really active traders who buy 10,000 stamps at a time would pay "only" about a 40% premium.)
If you were to buy a sheets of 20 $3.85 stamps (for Priority Mail, and larger packages) the premium would only be around 20%. The upfront cost is hefty, of course, $92.98 (but that's only about half the cost of one person going to a concert at a Clear Channel arena, counting tickets, handling and convenience charges, parking, and a bottle of water or two to prevent dehydration while you're standing in line waiting to get to your seat.)
According to stamps.com, the stamps have special optical coding, so that they won't be cancelled by most USPS equipment. So your friends and trading partners can keep relatively pristine copies of your custom artwork. It would, of course, be wrong to take advantage of this feature to reuse the stamps. . . .
Stamps.com also has rules prohibiting the improper use of copyrighted images; whether using already published, common images qualifies as "fair use" isn't known. The Smoking Gun website, unfortunately, recently tested the stamps.com screening process (there are other rules about offensive images, etc.) and got a few howlers through -- one showing Ted (the Unabomber) Kaczynski, another showing the outgoing governor of NJ with a certain close personal friend -- so they may be checking things a little more closely. The high school yearbook picture, which is easy to find online, should be OK, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if a batch of 1960s pictures never had their copyrights extended under current US law.
Bill
"I am William J. Clinton, and I approve this message." #nosmileys