"Presented as a philanthropic operation, this initiative looks more like a commercial action. Indeed, the participation is conditioned by the acceptance of a CC license allowing the commercial reuse of the pictures. Private or public entities can therefore use this pictures legally as postcards, posters, books or as illustrations in the press. The professional photographers living from the copyrights are worried by this initiative [...]" Strainu

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Strainu <strainu10(a)gmail.com> wrote: My personal opinion is that the real meaning is: "some of our members didn't bother to read the rules of the contest and discovered too late that people could reuse their work" or "There are some really good photographers out there who share their work for free so how on earth are we going to charge a lot of money for a bunch of good photos?" Cruccone _______________________________________________ Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu

Professional photographers worried about a contest where the main number of contestants are amateur. Interesting :-) Good job guys, this is a sign that we are doing well :P

Hello, Photographers (at last in France, I don't know if it is the same in other countries) are facing a serious profesionnal crisis due to several factors, one of them being the massive usage by the media of "Royalty Free" photographs. As several companies built their royalty free photographs databases through photo contests, the "Union des Photographes Professionnels" (an association of pro photographers) has established a blacklist of photo contests where participants abandon their copyright & royalties to the organizers of the contest. So, as the CC-By-SA used on Commons allows commercial usage, they referenced WLM in this blacklist. However, this had very little impact : no mentions in the press, very few on Twitter or other social networks. We prepared an answer for them but it is currently awaiting final rereading before sending. Sylvain. 2011/10/28 Béria Lima &lt;berialima(a)gmail.com&gt; -- Sylvain Boissel Chargé de mission communauté et technologie de Wikimédia France tél 06.18.90.71.04 - mail sylvain.boissel(a)wikimedia.fr - twitter @sboissel<https://twitter.com/#!/sboissel> *Imaginez un monde où chaque personne sur la planète aurait librement accès à la totalité du savoir humain. C'est notre engagement. Aidez Wikimedia France à en faire une réalité <https://dons.wikimedia.fr>.* www.wikimedia.fr _______________________________________________ Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list WikiLovesMonuments(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu