Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This Photograph Is Not Free

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 257 posts

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#231

Post by waqf »

jodrellblank wrote: post #54
Suncho wrote: post #49

The very existence of an intellectual property market is absurd. In my opinion, the scenarios in which person should expect to make a profit doing something creative are: A. The person is hired to create something. B. The person creates something that's not easy to copy. If you were hired to design a set for a play, you would get paid for your work. If you created a physical three-dimensional sculpture, someone else…

So you want a world wiyh no more pro quality books, films, music or TV series?

I want that world! Or more precisely, I want to take that chance, due to a mixture of:

* I think it likely that we'll still get quality works produced;

* I think we have plenty of quality books, films, music and TV series already (more than one can consume in a lifetime), so the opportunity cost of not getting more isn't so high, and

* it's much more important to me not to impede the free dissemination of information.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#232

Post by throwaway64 »

esonderegger wrote: post #147
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…

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'd love to get paid for browsing the internet and commenting on things, who is to say thats without value because its so easily done.

you have no right to make money doing what you would like to do, sorry thats just life.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#233

Post by kamaal »

Lets say I pay him $6,612 then I would want not just the photograph but also the equipment he listed in the add up to the price.

Is that ok?

If yes then it makes perfect sense to me.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#234

Post by firebones »

mibbitor wrote: post #180
roc wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 pho…

Ridiculous. By that logic, we will soon all stop writing (let alone write for any sort of direct or indirect compensation) because "no massive amount of skill is involved". Instead, we can just brute force it and simply pick the best novels, technical documentation (or HN comments, for that matter) from the many choices of million-character sequences presented to us.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#236

Post by kamaal »

joebadmo wrote: post #169
smackfu wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comments are fine, because the entire premise of the blog post is wrong. He should be paid because his skill as a photographer is worth money, not because he paid for a lot of expensive equipment.

This is parallel to a recent HN thread on copyright: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303796 I think photographers (like musicians) face two problems: the amateurization of photography, and the lack of marginal cost of distribution. Photographers need to figure out how to get paid. You can try to charge me the cost of production if you want, but I'm not going to pay it, esp. when there's a large and growing base…

I would disagree a little.

There is a huge difference between amateur music and professional music, So big a difference in fact that I would say there is no comparison between them.

Good professional musicians make money just like we programmers do. The problem starts when amateur musicians/programmers take music/photography as a hobby first and then try to make money out of it.

The biggest problem with this is they don't match the quality of work produced by the actual professionals. And now have to compete with fellow amateurs.

Amateur photographers/musicians can't make money for the very same reasons why your side android apps project doesn't make anything more than $50 an year.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#237

Post by ismarc »

kamaal wrote: post #236
joebadmo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is parallel to a recent HN thread on copyright: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303796 I think photographers (like musicians) face two problems: the amateurization of photography, and the lack of marginal cost of distribution. Photographers need to figure out how to get paid. You can try to charge me the cost of production if you want, but I'm not going to pay it, esp. when there's a large and growing base…

I would disagree a little. There is a huge difference between amateur music and professional music, So big a difference in fact that I would say there is no comparison between them. Good professional musicians make money just like we programmers do. The problem starts when amateur musicians/programmers take music/photography as a hobby first and then try to make money out of it. The biggest problem with this is they…

While I agree with your overall point, you seem to be taking a restrictive view on what people call/consider to be amateur. I normally am not very picky with definitions and appropriate derived meanings, but the different usages of amateur are in complete contrast to each other and frequently hinders communication. The typical reference of "amateur" X competing with "professional" X is not for the less skilled or less capable. It's from those that can, but choose not to derive their income from that activity. There are MANY people who have hobbies that they are profoundly amazing at but cannot do as a means of income. Whether it's not being able to do it on demand to not wanting to lose the joy of doing it because it's required, it does not signify a lack of discipline or capability. These are the amateur's people are talking about. Not just those that are wanting to do it but haven't found a way to "break in". For a good example, hit up any hole in the wall jazz club. You will see some of the most phenomenal performers get some pocket change every Friday night after working as who-knows-what to pay the bills doing something they completely enjoy but don't want to do full time for whatever reason.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#239

Post by pdaviesa »

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…

These are the same people who think all digital content should be free - music, movies, games, apps, etc. No matter how technically advanced our society becomes, one axiom will always remain true - there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#240

Post by gurkendoktor »

Suncho wrote: post #103
gurkendoktor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the big picture of the system, not at single transactions. With payment after the fact, artists can optionally use their gut feeling about demand and produce something that they think may sell without having any reputation beforehand. I think that this is essential to entrepreneurship and would hate to see it lost. Many arguments about piracy don't make sense until you look at the big picture. To someone acti…

Wow. If everyone could copy whatever car they wanted for free, that would be a good thing. Since everyone would already have a car, car salesmen would go out of business. That's exactly what should happen.

Again, you are not looking at the big picture.

If you physically stole cars but left the complete per-unit cost in cash there, then you wouldn't have done anything wrong, right? Alternatively, you have a machine that makes perfect copies. Both work the same for this purpose.

Because you only focus on the per-unit cost. But even cars have fixed, one-time R&D costs that are distributed on each sold car totally arbitrarily just as the fixed costs for producing digital goods area distributed totally arbitrarily on each download/CD/whatever. The only difference is that digital goods have virtually no per unit-costs to go along with it. Still, in both cases, you need frameworks to reward creative/R&D work if you want it to happen (especially in a competitive way).

If you copy all music and all cars, then everybody has a car and music, but what is the incentive to produce better cars and new music later? That is the big picture.

Post reply on HN