On New Year’s Day I had a rival food review site use one of my photos without attribution. My first reaction was to fire off an angry email about not reading the Creative Commons license that accompanies the photo, not to mention the bad manners of swiping images from a competing site. I wrote the email and sat there tapping the keyboard, ready to send it to the so-called editor of the site.
And then I took a deep breath and wrote a very different email.
This one explained why the license prohibited use, and how the photo’s presence on their site diluted the uniqueness of their site as well as mine. I told the editor to keep it on the site, but to give me the attribution for the photo and link love. I finished up by offering to license photos in the future or quote jobs for freelance photography projects. Heck, I figured if they liked my photo well enough to use it now, then they might be a future customer.
It was a great idea, but it didn’t pan out. The editor wrote me back and in two sentences apologized for the trouble and said she deleted the image.
I’m still upset that the image was used at all, but now I have a more commerce-minded way of dealing with the inconsideration. I’m going to try this approach for a while. I’ll let you know if it does anything for my blood pressure, to curb uncredited use of my photography, or to generate income. *fingers crossed*
PBS just ran an entry on Mixing it Up: How to Make New Content From Old Media. The question about how to reuse elements of our cultural heritage while balancing against the rights of individual artists is one of the core questions of RIP – A Remix Manifesto, a documentary I saw at this year’s SXSW. How people reuse and credit my photography is something that I personally struggle with, so this movie helped me back down from the “how dare they use my photos” mentality towards something more equitable and reasonable.
Another part of the challenge is managing requests for use of my photos that have a clear license attached to them. PBS contacted me to use this photo even though I have the license information watermarked into the image. It was nice of them to ask, but completely unnecessary.
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig, who is interviewed for the film, happened to be on hand that evening to answers questions from the audience. I, of course, happened to have my camera with me.
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.
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