I’ve struggled for a long time with my photography, copyright, and the need to make money from my creative work. I have most of my catalog under Creative Commons, but I switched back to copyright after so many people ignored the attribution and non-commercial aspects of the license. It was too much work to track people down and educate them. Plus, every time I’d find my work on a site without credit, I would get pissed.
Spending all your time angry with the Internet is no way to go through life.
I got turned around again after attending the “How to Protect Your Brand Without Being a Jerk!” session at SXSW. Putting my photos under CC doesn’t mean I don’t have rights and can’t pursue violations like I could under before. They talked me down from the copyright ledge I was standing on. The best suggestion I received during the session was to watermark my photos with the CC license. That way the license and attribution travel with the photo.
Besides, how could I ever copyright a photo of Larry Lessig? That would be seriously wrong.
