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This photograph is free

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Re: This photograph is free

#61

Post by Jach »

> On the other hand, it has given me a lot of joy and pride. The joy to take beautiful pictures. The pride of building the reputation of being a decent photographer. The pleasure to give away my work and see people smile. The satisfaction coming from the fact that my work is useful, seeing it's reused by others.

This is a nice sentiment. It reminded me of a quote from Richard Feynman on his thoughts about the Nobel Prize:

"I've already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out. The kick in the discovery. The observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me." ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMaBmik4VYg )

Re: This photograph is free

#62

Post by timwiseman »

sethg wrote: post #42
mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that any sense of smugness in this article is more than outshone by the sense of entitlement in the original. The second post acknowledges reality (that many good quality photos are available for free) while the first post seems to whine about the consequences of that reality (when free photos are so widely available, why should you be surprised/angry when someone asks you for your photos for free?)

Why shouldn’t the first photographer have a “sense of entitlement”? He’s entitled! He has the right to set prices for his work, and the rest of us have the right to pay, negotiate a better price, or walk away from the deal. But going up to someone and saying “you should give this away” is not negotiating for a better price; it’s practically an insult. It’s like walking into a car dealership, seeing that the sticker p…

It largely depends on the context the "you should give this away" is said in.

If say a well known media organization says, "You should let me use this photo for free, because I will give you credit and that might help you get business later" that is negotiating. The creator of the photo may or may not like the terms, but it is an offer of something of value for something of value. At worst, if the photographer is already well known, it is a bad offer that is wasting his time, but it is never insulting.

If someone who studies economics says to a new photographer, "You should stop selling photos and sell the service of creating new photos on order due to the marginal prices involved and current market situation. Give your old ones away to build up reputation." This is not an insult, but advice (whether or not it is good advice is a different question).

He is entitled to set the asking price for his work, but that is all.

Re: This photograph is free

#63

Post by bradleyland »

tptacek wrote: post #57

Or, "How not to make money selling software: a succinct illustration of cost-based and market-based (specifically, value-based) pricing in just two comment threads." Why can Github charge FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR for a local install of Github and succeed, impressively so, despite a small army of nerds pointing out how inexpensive it is to run one's own Git server and Gitorious? Why does 37signals have an office…

Being more on the business side than the development side, I completely identify with what you're saying. The statement that value is derived from the cost of the alternative is central to market thinkers, of which I identify myself as.

However! This statement struck me as out of place:

> The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow.

There is not 100% agreement on the moralism of copying digital goods. There is, agree or disagree, a lack of 100% acceptance of copyright as it stands today. This introduces an alternative that costs $0, which messes up the whole market equation. This moral conflict has to be resolved before you can arrive at a market price for digital goods.

Re: This photograph is free

#64

Post by tptacek »

bradleyland wrote: post #63
tptacek wrote: post #57

Or, "How not to make money selling software: a succinct illustration of cost-based and market-based (specifically, value-based) pricing in just two comment threads." Why can Github charge FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR for a local install of Github and succeed, impressively so, despite a small army of nerds pointing out how inexpensive it is to run one's own Git server and Gitorious? Why does 37signals have an office…

Being more on the business side than the development side, I completely identify with what you're saying. The statement that value is derived from the cost of the alternative is central to market thinkers, of which I identify myself as. However! This statement struck me as out of place: > The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow. There is not 100% agreement on the moralism of copying digital goods. The…

We software developers are in a whole heap of a lot of trouble if we expect the broad market to dignify the idea that digital goods are legitimately priced at "what they cost to copy".

Re: This photograph is free

#65

Post by timwiseman »

yangez wrote: post #27
aspir wrote: post #5

I hope everyone understands, including the authors themselves, that each author in this back-and-forth is correct. The right to give and the right to charge are inherently personal decisions that only the owner of the photo can make. This was the main frustration that I had with the "this photograph is not free" comments, as well as the tone the author of this article takes. It doesn't matter what the commentators cl…

This is not entirely accurate. The original "this photograph is not free" article wasn't an attempt to prevent his own images from being copied. It was an attempt to influence OTHER photographers not to give away their photos for free. I've worked for a long time in the photography industry. In my experience there are two things that justifiably piss photographers off in a very major way: 1. Getting their photo rippe…

2. Seeing a publication use another photographer's photo for free (even with permission), because it loses EVERYBODY money.

I think you are mistaken here. For one thing, there is a chance that free photo will get the photographer noticed and get him hired to create a photo on-demand. That photographer ends up making money (although indirectly) by allowing free use of existing work.

And for another, there is a good chance that if the photo wasn't available for free the publication would have instead used no photo or hand an intern already on staff take a mediocre photo for filler. In this case, no one has lost money.

I am currently a developer by profession and make my money by creating software (on salary). But I do not get mad when others give away software, I use a fair bit of OSS myself (Python, Firefox, etc). I do not think when I see OSS that everybody has lost money. (I also try to contribute, but my contributions are currently tiny).

Re: This photograph is free

#66

Post by bradleyland »

tptacek wrote: post #64
bradleyland wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being more on the business side than the development side, I completely identify with what you're saying. The statement that value is derived from the cost of the alternative is central to market thinkers, of which I identify myself as. However! This statement struck me as out of place: > The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow. There is not 100% agreement on the moralism of copying digital goods. The…

We software developers are in a whole heap of a lot of trouble if we expect the broad market to dignify the idea that digital goods are legitimately priced at "what they cost to copy".

I think the moral position of "copy anything" is definitely questionable, but time and time again we've seen the actual markets compete in this way. The decline of music sales is practically a case study in this fact. Whether or not someone will openly state that they evaluate the "cost to copy" option is one thing, but how they act is another. I can't claim that I've never pirated a movie or music, thus I have no moral basis for dismissing that position out of hand.

I'd take the contrary view. If you don't consider "cost to copy" a market competitor, you're in a whole heap of trouble. Position your business in a way that isn't exposed to this type of alternate-pricing, or be prepared to compete with it.

Re: This photograph is free

#67

Post by tptacek »

bradleyland wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We software developers are in a whole heap of a lot of trouble if we expect the broad market to dignify the idea that digital goods are legitimately priced at "what they cost to copy".

I think the moral position of "copy anything" is definitely questionable, but time and time again we've seen the actual markets compete in this way. The decline of music sales is practically a case study in this fact. Whether or not someone will openly state that they evaluate the "cost to copy" option is one thing, but how they act is another. I can't claim that I've never pirated a movie or music, thus I have no mo…

Since appropriating someone else's photo for commercial use without compensation will assuredly get you sued and incur costs far greater than simply licensing the photo, there's an irony to the fact that the discussion on HN about photos is couched in moralism, even though morality is way less relevant to the photo case than it is to the software case (you can easily appropriate software without paying for it, as GPL violators do every day).

Re: This photograph is free

#68

Post by timwiseman »

aspir wrote: post #24
bad_user wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is true, however for products for which supply exceeds demand and which can be easily copied, then charging for such products does not work so well. For example, in the early days of our industry, many people buying licensed software were doing so because copying on floppy disks was error prone and packaged software was getting distributed on storage of higher quality. Licensed software also worke…

This isn't going to be popular on this board, but:: Your statement is why the writers of the US constitution mandated creative protection[0]. To prevent instances of piracy because users don't feel like they should pay for something made that could be duplicated. Your argument goes back to mine-- by pirating works, you're making the decision for the owner/creator whether to release that work freely or to charge. That…

I respectfully suspect you are misunderstanding history. First, the Copyright Clause permits, but does not mandate, certain forms of creative protection for a limited time.

Second, the clause itself states its goal. It was to encourage more creation, "preventing piracy" was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

And finally, there is good reason to think that regarding copyright in particular the target was never meant to be users at all, but other commercial grade publishers and competing authors. (It was prohibitively difficult in that era for an end user to make a copy of any substantial creative work so it likely wasn't even considered. I suspect, given some of Jefferson's comments in particular, that many of the Framers would have been against trying to apply copyright laws to end users had they realized it would eventually be an issue).

Re: This photograph is free

#69

Post by njharman »

aspir wrote: post #5

I hope everyone understands, including the authors themselves, that each author in this back-and-forth is correct. The right to give and the right to charge are inherently personal decisions that only the owner of the photo can make. This was the main frustration that I had with the "this photograph is not free" comments, as well as the tone the author of this article takes. It doesn't matter what the commentators cl…

> The right to give and the right to charge are inherently personal decisions

Actually, in the U.S.A. the right to restrict others from "using" "your" "intellectual property" is granted by the government and only for limited times (in theory). The default natural state is that everyone has the right to share, reuse, etc everyone's intangible creative works.

Re: This photograph is free

#70

Post by georgemcbay »

yangez wrote: post #27
aspir wrote: post #5

I hope everyone understands, including the authors themselves, that each author in this back-and-forth is correct. The right to give and the right to charge are inherently personal decisions that only the owner of the photo can make. This was the main frustration that I had with the "this photograph is not free" comments, as well as the tone the author of this article takes. It doesn't matter what the commentators cl…

This is not entirely accurate. The original "this photograph is not free" article wasn't an attempt to prevent his own images from being copied. It was an attempt to influence OTHER photographers not to give away their photos for free. I've worked for a long time in the photography industry. In my experience there are two things that justifiably piss photographers off in a very major way: 1. Getting their photo rippe…

How do you feel about Open Source software?

Because while the analogy isn't perfect there are obvious similarities between programmers releasing their software free (by both meanings) and open and photographers distributing their own photos via Creative Commons or whatever.

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