Alexander Georgiadis wrote:
I have never been a fan of Creative Commons licensing. This article by
some guy called Scott, does a great job of articulating why it sucks:
http://rising.blackstar.com/why-photographers-hate-creative-commons.html
On my website I reserve all rights to my work. Wanna use my stuff? Ask me.
That's fine. I'm a fan of creative commons licensing myself; but an
important element of the program, so far as I'm concerned, is that it's
*voluntary*. I don't offer most of my work under CC myself (I'm an
amateur photographer).
On the other hand, my last appearance in a book by a stranger was
because the author found the photo she wanted on Wikipedia and tracked
it back to me and paid me to use it in her book (the wikipedia version
wasn't all that high-res, I haven't CCd a full-res version of
anything). (I say "book by a stranger" because author photos of people
who are friends both happen much more often, and aren't the same thing
as somebody who doesn't know me choosing to use one of my photos in
their book.)
I know there are people around who feel that copyright shouldn't exist
*at all*. I consider them kooks, personally. I do feel the term has
become immensely too long, to the point where copyright is keeping a lot
of interesting stuff UNavailable (I know people who have spent immense
amounts of effort *trying* to find the rights owner on a story they
wanted to include in a fiction anthology, and sometimes ended up leaving
the story out because they couldn't find who owned the rights.) And I
do feel that art building on other art is terribly important.
Shakespeare did it, and Tom Stoppard does it now, and essentially every
other artist does it too -- sometimes to the point where copyright would
stop them if it still applied, sometimes now. Shutting that down
completely would really stifle art.
Intellectual property law is going through rather a ferment just now,
and at the moment it's moved towards being far too strict and far too
long-lasting, in my opinion. But I'm not in favor of throwing it out
entirely, that's crazy talk.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
