On 09/02/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If I were a celebrity, I would not release my photo
under a free
license. If I were a professional photographer or artist, I would not
release my work under a free license either.
Why? Imagine Fiona Xie releasing her photo under a free license to let
Wikipedia use it, and a nasty vandal creating a derivative work by
enlarging the size of her boobs, and publishing the derivative photo.
Bear in mind that copyright is not related to your right not to have
your image used in a defamatory or misleading manner - whatever rights
the law gives you in this regard you retain whether you hold the
copyright or not.
And malicious vandals usually don't give a damn about the legal status
of the work they're chopping around...
If I were a professional photographer or artist, and I
released my
work under a free license, I wouldn't be able to earn a living.
There are a few professional and semi-professional photographers who
have released work under a free license - have a look at Towpilot's
work on Commons, where what he's doing is releasing a load of
freelance photos he made of Hollywood stars on promotional tours in
the 70s/80s. The market he took these for no longer exists - he can't
really flog them to Scandinavian entertainment magazines twenty years
on! - and they're of no real economic value to him now; sure, he might
be able to sell one or two for a biography or a retrospective, but who
would hunt him down to find them?
It's also advertising - you're releasing photos, there is the promise
of more to come, of other (better?) images you still have on the
market. They're attributed, so your name continues with them; an
interested reuser can always contact you.
And, pragmatically, a lot of reusers don't want to deal with open
licenses or the like - they want what they understand, which is a
clear license for a specific use from the copyright holder, for which
they are willing to pay. There are a few people who make a small but
comfortable amount from people finding their freely-licensed images on
Commons and then paying to use them...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk