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This Photograph Is Not Free

petapixel.com

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Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#171

Post by alex_c »

Confusion wrote: post #152
mibbitor wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A webapp is run as a service. You're charging people for a service you provide. That makes it very hard to copy. A photo isn't a service. It's a collection of bytes that is trivial to copy. If you want to make money as a photographer, you need to structure it in a way that means it's hard to copy. But these days, anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent. If he's an exceptional photographer, he should be…

You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal. As to your second argument, that 'anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent': image quality isn't all that counts. In fact, it's substantially less important than composing a good photograph in the fir…

You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal.

And yet, people still kill each other on a daily basis. At some point it may become practical to take precautions not to get killed, or to move into a line of work or a place where you're less likely to get killed.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#172

Post by bmelton »

parfe wrote: post #121

Well the comments here terribly disappoint me. Clearly the photographer wants to be paid as a professional, just like anyone else here. The author should not have included any monetary figure in the article as doing so brings down the wrath of a thousand pedants with pocket calculators proving he overcharges and overvalues his work. So many people here seem to think they somehow "got him" on some straw-man price-poin…

The most interesting bit to me in his total is that he didn't put in any cost for his time, which I'm guessing would ordinarily be the lion's share of a task like this.

I don't know if he was just trying to establish the 'overhead' costs, or that at a minimum, discounting his time, that's what it cost him, but I'd like to see that number be higher, if anything.

This, to me, is the same argument I made recently regarding musicians, in the creation of music, the finished work isn't zero-cost. Ignoring the recording studio costs, media costs, distribution costs, there are other costs like instruments, instrument lessons where applicable, etc.

Even if you believe that you should be able to reproduce an artist's work free of charge (which I admit I often am conflicted on,) you have no right to take the work that it cost them money to produce for free because you aren't depriving them of anything.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#173

Post by gergles »

dchest wrote: post #163
jonknee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also complaining about people asking for his photos for free. That has nothing to do with the law.

Asking to license photos for free is also a valid and common way to acquire licenses. This particular author is annoyed by such requests, because he wants to license the right to copy the result of his work for a fee. Other authors are okay with this, and some even explicitly allow such use (see Creative Commons licenses). This has everything to do with the law, because if not for copyright laws, he wouldn't be able…

He'd be able to 'demand' whatever he wants. Charities "demand" donations all the time and get them, and there's no protectionist law they have to deal with.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#174

Post by dchest »

Confusion wrote: post #152
mibbitor wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A webapp is run as a service. You're charging people for a service you provide. That makes it very hard to copy. A photo isn't a service. It's a collection of bytes that is trivial to copy. If you want to make money as a photographer, you need to structure it in a way that means it's hard to copy. But these days, anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent. If he's an exceptional photographer, he should be…

You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal. As to your second argument, that 'anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent': image quality isn't all that counts. In fact, it's substantially less important than composing a good photograph in the fir…

It's still not morally acceptable or legal.

It's illegal, yes. But the question whether copying published works is morally unacceptable to people is debatable.

Comparing sharing with killing or stealing is a common mistake.

Citing http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft

The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#175

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

mibbitor wrote: post #165
esonderegger wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some content is inherently easy to copy. That doesn't mean it is without value. Copying a poem is easy, but copying a novel requires slightly more effort. Does that mean all poets should become novelists in order to make a living? When the Beatles were making some of their best work (in my opinion), they weren't touring. Who are we to say that the recordings are without value, just because they are easily copied, and…

I wasn't stating an opinion. I was stating the facts. As technology has progressed, it has meant that instead of very few producers and millions of consumers of 'content', now everyone produces content. That means the value of 'content' has drastically reduced to the point that it's almost worthless for some areas. This is progress, and you can't stop it. Of course art is valuable, as it has always been. But as state…

But surely the whole point of that glut of content is that you don't need his image, not that you should be able to take it without his permission?

As you say, there are thousands of sunset images, probably thousands under, say, a CC or free license. That means you can use them, not that you can declare his image is worthless and use it.

In terms of can copy therefore, should be allowed to copy, that just changes the potential nature of the contract that exists. With physical goods there was a barrier to copying, but there are plenty of situations in society where what governs our behaviour isn't what we can do, it's what we all (or a vast majority of us) have agreed to do because we believe that is in our mutual best interest.

The fact it's easy to copy things means the potential for change exists and the mechanisms whereby restrictions are enforced may change, but it doesn't mean that in the future can copy will automatically mean is permitted to copy by society.

Yes, you can't stop progress, but the direction of progress is still unclear.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#176

Post by bmelton »

nsxwolf wrote: post #170
hammock wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a thousand times yes. "The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his work," said Joseph Stalin. Which is backwards. What many people with only a superficial understanding of economics don't seem to grasp is that the "perfect competition" ecosystem that is described in Econ 101 - in which goods are priced at cost - is an EMERGENT property…

I don't see what's wrong with his pricing model. He's basing his price on what it would cost someone, starting from nothing, to go out and create a picture like that. It's actually a discount in that regard since most people would have to spend considerable time learning how to take that photo. It's a perfectly good starting place for a price. And nowhere did he say that price wasn't negotiable.

In addition, I suspect that's the price he would sell the rights to the photo for (if he would sell it at all), meaning that whomever paid that price would own the work outright.

I also suspect that he would be happy to license uses of that photo for substantially less (though I'm VERY curious as to what that cost is, actually) to magazines and other people wanting to use the work on a single-use basis.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#177

Post by dchest »

gergles wrote: post #173
dchest wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking to license photos for free is also a valid and common way to acquire licenses. This particular author is annoyed by such requests, because he wants to license the right to copy the result of his work for a fee. Other authors are okay with this, and some even explicitly allow such use (see Creative Commons licenses). This has everything to do with the law, because if not for copyright laws, he wouldn't be able…

He'd be able to 'demand' whatever he wants. Charities "demand" donations all the time and get them, and there's no protectionist law they have to deal with.

English is not my first language, but dictionary tells me that I used the term "demand" correctly:

   5. (Law)
   (a) The asking or seeking for what is due or claimed as due.
   ...
   [1913 Webster]

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#178

Post by roc »

mibbitor wrote: post #164
Confusion wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal. As to your second argument, that 'anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent': image quality isn't all that counts. In fact, it's substantially less important than composing a good photograph in the fir…

> Taking good photographs is as hard as it always was. Untrue. With digital, you can take 1,000 photos and chances are one will be fantastic. You can brute force brilliance. That wasn't true before digital. Photos are simply recording something that exists. It's not creating art as such (IMHO). So unlike painting / writing books / writing code, you could just sit a monkey there with a good camera, variety of lenses,…

> "With digital, you can take 1,000 photos and chances are one will be fantastic. You can brute force brilliance."

This is simply untrue.

It's true that at one point simply getting everything into focus at the right moment took a skilled photographer. But that was never the sum total of what a skilled photographer brought to the table.

A sunset photo isn't good simply when it's the best of a million possible photos of a sunset. It can be good because the photographer found an interesting location to set the picture. It can be good because the photographer waited-for and/or was present for an opportune confluence of elements such as weather, tide, etc. It can be good when the position and angle of the camera framed the scene in an appealing way, including or excluding other elements to enhance the shape, color and symmetry of the composition. It can be good when the focus highlights an interesting subject, and de-emphasizes non-essential visual noise.

Taking a billion photos can guarantee that you get a solid reproduction of whatever you pointed your camera at. But it will never render irrelevant the skills of subject identification, color balance (artistic balance, not simply accurate reproduction), composition, framing, etc. And lastly, it's absolutely no substitute for inspiration, education and experience.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#179

Post by jseliger »

jdietrich wrote: post #48

The machinery needed to produce a ballpoint pen costs the best part of $10m. A ballpoint pen costs 20 cents. Cameras are expensive. Photographs are almost worthless. Supply utterly outstrips demand, especially for shots like landscapes that have great appeal for amateur photographers but little commercial utility. Ten years ago, you could name every paparazzo working in London. They were a small circle of time-served…

Cameras are expensive.

Actually, even this is less true than it used to be—hence your comment, "With a cheap DSLR and a smartphone [. . .]" You can find stuff the pros were using a few years ago for a fraction of what they paid; a used Canon 5D full frame camera goes for under $1,000 these days (and it'll probably be less when the 5d Mark III hits), and older Rebels like the XTi can be had for ~300. I'm sure things are similar on the Nikon / Sony / etc. side, although I'm less familiar.

Cheap cameras are yielding all kinds of interesting social (cops being unhappy at having their once-deniable brutality filmed, "sexting") and economic (like your paparazzo) effects.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#180

Post by mibbitor »

roc wrote: post #178
mibbitor wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking good photographs is as hard as it always was. Untrue. With digital, you can take 1,000 photos and chances are one will be fantastic. You can brute force brilliance. That wasn't true before digital. Photos are simply recording something that exists. It's not creating art as such (IMHO). So unlike painting / writing books / writing code, you could just sit a monkey there with a good camera, variety of lenses,…

> "With digital, you can take 1,000 photos and chances are one will be fantastic. You can brute force brilliance." This is simply untrue. It's true that at one point simply getting everything into focus at the right moment took a skilled photographer. But that was never the sum total of what a skilled photographer brought to the table. A sunset photo isn't good simply when it's the best of a million possible photos o…

And what about when your camera floats around automatically getting every available shot, every available composition, framing, leaving you to just select the best?

There are only so many parameters that make up a recording of light. Sorry, but I do not see a massive amount of skill involved in it now that you can brute force most of it, or have it automatically done for you.

We've also been fed so many fantastic photos online etc, that we rarely go "wow" any more. For all we know it could be a photo, a photoshop, a CGI. What was once amazing is now often the norm.

I really wouldn't like to be a professional photographer these days, as I just don't think you can make much money at it.

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