On one hand, I feel your pain. On the other hand, cost and value are not the same thing, and so aren't value and market price.
If you do something and what you do costs much more than the market value of its output, make sure it's not your job. Hobbies usually fall in this category.
In the same way that a liquid betting market, the price is a reasonable estimate for probability, in a any liquid market, the price is a reasonable estimate of value.
Right. The market price of a good is governed only by supply and demand. Sure, the cost it takes to produce the good influences its supply and demand, but in a capitalist society, only the market determines its price at the end of the day.
Let's forget the sunk cost for a minute. What happens if the price per item is less than the variable cost per item? Is that "unfair"? No, that's precisely how firms go out of business, when no one wants to pay (i.e. there is no demand) for the products they sell.
This is not an argument for plagiarism / piracy. Capitalist markets do need strong property ownership laws and enforcement.
That's not uncommon, unfortunately. Book publishers are trying their hardest to retain their business model, where supply and demand is a large factor. It won't last, middle men are going to go away as self-publishing services like Amazon take over. Just like iTunes is taking over music, Steam is taking over gaming, etc.
I would happily accept that limitation if O'Reilly made all its books available with the local library's eBook lending system. The local library system takes its limited funding and prioritizes variety over recency.
It's great if you're doing a research paper on something non-technical, but not so great if you want a current book on anything relating to computers. Even quantity-limited eBooks would solve that.
> * As someone mentioned, THIS single photo didn’t cost me $6,612, but if you wanted to create it, from scratch, that is what is involved. So I consider it the replacement value if it’s stolen, or how much my lawyer will send you a bill for if it’s found being used without my permission.*
I hope he's never pirated a film or he could owe the studio millions and millions of dollars.
He should be arguing that it is expensive to take photos, and that any sales of them need to add up to cover initial and future costs. He should also be arguing that they are paying not just for the expense of taking it, but for his skill and time.
By arguing that one photo is worth that much, he is doing neither and looks like a moron.
I don't think he said that $6,612 is the cost of licensing its photo. He said he considers $6,612 the "replacement value", should someone publish it in a magazine without licensing first. So it's more akin to distributing for profit a movie you don't own any rights too.
I don't see why he would use this value as a basis for damages incurred though, since even someone publishing his photo without licensing it, hasn't taken (stolen) the photo from him. "Replacement value" has no meaning in this digital context.
In my opinion, there's no relation whatsoever between the cost of taking the photo and the damages he should seek. I think the damages should be correlated with the licensing value of the photo, majored appropriately for not acquiring licensing prior to using it.
A replacement value is only relevant if it has to be replaced - if I use his photo without permission in a magazine or a website, he still has the photo, no replacement needed.
While I am not denying him of the photo, I would of course be denying him of the revenue he would have earned had I licenced it from him, and would be entitled to demand that, and some more. If he had said that he would sue for $6k in punative costs, fair enough. Or even if he had said that he values his art at that price, and therefore that is what he charges for a single license.
Take Hollywood as an example, when they go after someone for illegally downloading a film they don't ask for the cost of a cinema ticket, or a cost of a DVD, they want a lot more than that. They don't however say "this film cost us £40m to create, that is it's replacement value, you now owe us £40m for downloading it".
"He still has the photo" is a nonsense argument -- he doesn't "still have the photo" from a licensing perspective in that he can no longer license exclusive or first usage rights (which also exist in regional and media contexts). The photograph has been irreparably damaged vis-a-vis its commercial value after unauthorised use/publication. That is something people seem to be unwilling to understand or consider for some strange reason -- the image file itself may still exist in a usable state, but its value is not in its bits, it's in its licensability. Unlicensed use demotes the picture's value to the level of royalty-free microstock in the eyes of potential buyers.
"""A replacement value is only relevant if it has to be replaced - if I use his photo without permission in a magazine or a website, he still has the photo, no replacement needed."""
No, he doesn't still "have the photo" as in "no damage done".
He has a digital file, but he just lost BOTH the exclusivity of the photo AND his say in how his work should be distributed.
> He said he considers $6,612 the "replacement value", should someone publish it in a magazine without licensing first.
Which is still so obviously moronic, that I don't even know why I bother pointing this out. Replacement value of a photo has to include the price of the camera it was taken with? This would be true if he used a brand new camera for each photo.
I wonder why he doesn't add the cost of his car, in which he traveled to and from location, and the cost of building the road, and his home, and his entire life up to this point, and what it cost humanity to invent photography in the first place.
I get his point, of course, and (kind of) agree with him, but his argument is weak.
While I agree in part with your argument, using words like nonsense' and 'moron' somewhat let it down.
He didn't argue that that was the cost of viewing his photograph, he argued that his is what he would be looking for if you used it for commercial gain without permission.
Some photographs do sell for millions of dollars; many news photographs sell for thousands despite the photographer having no skill and having just been in the right place at the right time.
Do you actually now how much a magazine pays to use a single photograph?
It's the logic of it that's my issue, not the cost.
Cost to purchase doesn't have to be tied to cost to produce, plenty of people buy Gucci without thinking that Gucci is spending 100% of what you pay on the materials.
Yes, a photograph can sell for seven figures, but not generally speaking because that's how much the equipment used to take it costs, but because of how it is valued as art.
While I don't agree with the justification of the cost based on required tools to create the image. I do believe that the main value from the photograph is the user's creativity and passion for using the tools to capture the photograph.
This is extremely interesting. What prove that it is yours if you are taking photos of state-owned lands? Do you have the right to sell photos for money for things (lands/nature/sky) that you don't own?
If yours is the only creative work that contributed to the photograph, then copyright on it is exclusively yours. If the creative work of a landscaper or architect is involved, consult a lawyer.
The photographer, John Mueller, is absolutely amazing and deserves to be paid for the art he produces. See his work here: http://www.johnbmueller.com
Regarding the value of the photo, I highly doubt he believes a single photo is worth $6,612. He is merely trying to explain that he should be paid for his work, and he has. Arguing that it is expensive to take photos wouldn't have gotten your attention. This got your attention. He won.
Edit: I have absolutely no affiliation with Mueller nor have I heard of him prior to this article, but was bothered by the negative and deliberately ignorant comments posted here. Very unlike Hacker News...
I don't see anyone here arguing he should not be paid for his work, that would be a preposterous position to take and I am not sure where you are reading this. The problem I have with his math logic is that it could actually hurt genuine arguments against copyright infringement from pro photographers. A better argument would be to disregard this bizarro math entirely and instead justify the photo's worth from his undeniable skill, talent and artistic merit. He could say the photo is worth $20,000 instead of using illogical reasoning.
No-one here may be. But plenty of newspapers/magazines are doing exactly that - taking photos that are on the internet and using them in their commercial publications without paying a penny to the photographer, and usually using the argument that if it's available on the web, it's free game.
I haven't seen anyone on HN making the argument that artists shouldn't be paid, but I have seen several saying they don't think artists should control the pricing and distribution of their work. To me, that is the most fundamental part of copyright.
Gary Larson gets to say that his works don't appear online and the creators of Penny Arcade get to put all their work online and make money indirectly. The point is that they as creators get to choose.
We can go back and forth all day about if you copy a photograph without the photographer's permission you have stolen from them, but what you have done is violate his/her copyright.
In recent days, we've all been applauding Louis C.K. for the approach he took distributing his stand-up video. Some have been saying that all video content should follow that model. This ignores the fact that DRM-free online distribution was his choice, and every content creator should be free to choose what method works best for them.
I personally think the author should have included the cost in hours and education to get him to the skill level he has today. His cost of living vs. how many photographs of that quality he makes is also valid in how he prices his work. The point he was trying to make, though, is that this is not just a hobby for him and the idea that his work is not free is worth ranting about.
"Deserves" to be paid? That seems a little counter-free-market. IF he produces a photo that someone wants or thinks they can use, THEN he can charge what the market will bear.
"Deserves to be paid". Humbug. That's the beginnings of an aristocracy that "deserve" to rule.
I would always take the side of a photographer who has his/her photos misused/abused, but this is just illogical reasoning. If a grocery store has a loaf of bread stolen, it is not worth the value of the entire business.
weird argument. Being a photographer myself, I understand they need to be properly rewarded for their creativity, effort and more importantly time.. but this is not the way to put your point. On similar lines, any thing you are buying day to day will cost you a fortune..be it a Coffee or a candy.
Discussion of fixed costs, variable costs, sunk costs, marginal costs, and opportunity costs and lots of other accounting and economics pricing models avoided.
But you should make sure your CFO can explain and your marketing department has a deep understanding.
And consider taking some accounting and micro-econ courses when you have the chance.
Well it depends on the way the photo is used. If i just save it as my wallpaper (I'd copy it from my browser cache, etc), it is free for me. Complaining about this makes no sense, or overlaying it with a transparent image..
But, if i, having done nothing in its creation, try to make some money from it (like putting it on a magazine), then the actual creator needs to get some value from what I gain. It will be the ethical thing to do. In this case John Mueller, will should morally have the right to accept or deny my request to reshare/use it.
I'm also a photographer, and I don't really buy into this particular philosophical argument.
The problem with photography is that you're never dealing with ORIGINAL ART. When John or I give a JPEG to a magazine or website, we're not _losing_ anything. This is the same argument that the RIAA and MPAA have tried to spin for over a decade.
I sell prints of my photos, and as long as no one else sets up shop and starts selling cheaper copies, I don't see a problem with sites and magazines using my photos.
The basic gist is: You have spent $6k. You can either have your photo in some magazine, or not. You can have that free publicity, or not. The only way you are 'losing' money is if the magazine would've paid you in the first place -- but again, for a non-original piece of art that they're (almost certainly) not getting an exclusive license on... the going rate isn't very much anyway.
I find it strange that more people have not brought up the 'lost-sale' fallacy. By saying 'no' he actually loses out in the end because if the magazine is only looking for free photos, say to the keep costs down, it will just go elsewhere and the readership of that magazine will probably never know about that amazing photograph nor the photographer himself.
That argument is only bullet-proof when all magazines are in exactly that position. But some magazines may well just want to use that picture and try to press the cost of using it.
He's being slightly facetious, I'd think, but: $6,612 is the amount he claims it would take the 'thief' to recreate the photo on their own. (Of course, he's only talking about material costs; he could easily claim $300,000 and get away with it, but anyway.) Thus, if the thief uses the photo inappropriately, since it "should" have cost 6k, that's what the lawyer will charge. In theory.
Not all photos of sunsets are equal, just as the huge number of portraits of women doesn't price the Mona Lisa out of the market.
If people decide that this photo has a particular merit, then that is worth something. Of course, that's an entirely subjective issue and will vary from person to person.
Sure, but I was talking in the context of filler photos for magazines and such, where very low cost is usually important.
If someone considers it a true œuvre d'art then the post is meaningless, because the available resolution isn't enough for a decent print at full page, and so nobody can "steal" it; they'll need to contact him regardless.
Great, then the magazines should use one of the 300,000, not his. His cost money to use, and that's the way it is.
Several of those 300k are mine, by the way, and they are indeed free to use, assuming I am credited as required by the license. Of course, there are countless stories of magazines ignoring even this very simple requirement.
He wouldn't be ranting if his photo was the sunset equivalent of the Mona Lisa. To use your metaphor, his photo is not the Mona Lisa. To use your metaphor, his photo is but one among the huge number of portraits of women.
The story is much longer... it involved a creaky wooden floor and two contractors. One quotes say $1000 and 7 days to fix, tears the whole thing up and fixes it. The other quotes $1000 pulls out his hammer and fixes the creaky floor with one nail in a few seconds.
Both fixed the problem, but the expert isn't worth any less than the guy who put in tons of man-hours.
I'd heard this as someone who fixed a design at the blueprints stage, charging £1,000 for what amounted to a few pencil marks. When asked for a break down the following was given: £0.10 for materials (the pencil), £999.90 for knowing where to make the marks and why.
It's like the guy who charged a thousand bucks to fix the machine by turning a screw; 1 buck for turning the screw, and 999 for knowing which screw to turn.
I find this kind of rant rather silly. Whatever, he should be paid for his work, it's his artistic value etc.
Just like he (or any photograph with a reputation) is able to set a very high price because of his quality seal, he doesn't have the right to bitch about how much he thinks the picture worths. If you go out in the market then play by the rules. And the rules are: any product is worth whatever amount the consumer is willing to pay for it. That's what an open market is about. If you don't like it, don't get into it. Simple as that.
Ok, using it without permission is a simple legal matter. Bitching about how much he thinks he should be paid... honestly that is no one else's problem.
But they don't have to because world is filled with "beauty". Supply far outstrips demand. People pay for scarcity. IP law and this guy are trying to enforce artificial scarcity in order to prop up a no longer relevant business model.
I enjoyed the article. It's a good reminder that the act of consuming creative work is far easier than its creation.
Too many people forget this and, IMHO, thereby fail to appreciate the creative work. Waxing poetic, but the view from the top of the mountain doesn't mean as near as much if you didn't climb up it.
The replacement value is actually much more than that. You could take that same equipment and shoot your entire lifetime and never get a shot like that.
The internet is not about content. It's about distribution. It costs a LOT of money to use a human -- the artist -- to "distribute" that image from nature onto his digital camera. From there it costs zero to distribute it to the rest of the world.
The answer is to tie the initial "distribution" of the data with the end consumer. So share the small image for free with whomever wants to see it, then charge a small fortune for a steganographically watermarked 10MB one. If you "sign" your images with a tamper-proof record of whom the recipient is, who you are, and perhaps a personalized message, not only can you track the image, you increase its value for the buyer. It's a good thing for both patron and artist.
ADD: As a real-world example of how this works, take my funny picture collection. (http://caption-of-the-day.com) I have a hobby of collecting funny pictures. Finally decided to put them all on a blog.
Now many of these pictures are actually web comics, or demotivators, or whatever. I want to credit each artist, but I'm just some schmuck collecting funny pictures. I don't have time to research each and every one.
But with watermarking I don't have to. Most of the times whoever made the image also put a watermark on it pointing back to their website. So instead of "lifting" the pictures, I'm actually providing free advertising for the artist. Artists compete to have their work distributed for free. Consumers become big fans of certain brands and help the artists advertise. Think of how worse this system would be if the artists controlled everything. DRM is a menace. The business models might be different, but The technology community has solved the exact problem this photographer is concerned about.
Firstly, I'm loving http://caption-of-the-day.com/ - but it appears to be broken. "Click to View" only activates the top post (in Firefox 9 at least). Will be adding you to my list of sites to visit regularly though...
Secondly, whilst watermarking works for funny pictures, or people who solely sell artwork, it isn't something I would class as a solution. For people who mainly want to share their work, but simply don't want it ripped off, it's ruining the original artwork. Watermarks are ugly.
Also, the OP says he's not concerned with distribution...
I read his concerns about distribution a different way.
If you give your photo away for “credit” then the best possible scenario for you is someone will see your photo, contact you, and ask if they could borrow one of your photos… for credit. Try this… next time you’re at dinner, tell your waiter you’ll tell all your friends how good the service was if he gives you dinner for free.
It occurs to me that as much as I hate DRM, I'm actually making a "DRM-light" argument.
I think it's possible to have a file format in which the artist "signs" his work, perhaps along with whomever he sold it to -- a secure provenance chain. The payment provider would perform this service as part of the digital transfer.
That way you could distribute anything you want, however you want. The value would be in the distribution chain.
I'm a hobby photographer and professional programmer and author. Believe me, I know the pain this guy is experiencing. But the simple fact is bits are worthless. The photos of Ansel Adams aren't worth nearly as much anymore. But the provenance of a piece of work, being able to show that it came directly from the artist, perhaps with a personalized message on the back? That's priceless.
The economy just isn't based on physical goods as much as it used to be.
(BTW, "click to view" is supposed to slide out a section where I provide my own snarky comments. That way if I decide to use one of the images in a presentation some day I've already got a few jokes lined up. Works on FF 8.0 in Ubuntu for me, but I'll look into it.)
"click to view" is supposed to slide out a section where I provide my own snarky comments
On your home page, go to the second post, and click...
You're javascript only slides things with the id sampleOuter. As you have multiple entries with the id sampleOuter on your homepage, most browsers will pick the first.
If you're intent is to slide open ALL of them, I'd use a class, rather than an ID.
If you're intent is to just slide open the one that's clicked on, you need each "sampleOuter" to have a unique identifier you can select it on. You can then pass that to your "toggleSampleView" method.
> The replacement value is actually much more than that.
While I agree with his main point regarding letting someone use your output "for credit", judging the cost of a photo like this is more than somewhat bogus and makes his argument sound silly (so the people that need to listen to his correct point will just turn off long before they get to it).
The replacement value for a photo has nothing to has very little to do with what it cost to take the photo, or what it would cost the user to have the photo taken especially for them.
Most photos are worthless except to the person who took them. If someone uses your photo without permission you have not lost the photo so it does not need replacing.
What he may have lost is the price he could have commanded for exclusive use of the image, because he can no longer sell/license exclusive use (as it has already been used). So what he would need reimbursing for is the value he could have gained through such licensing (plus any relevant legal and admin fees), not the cost of taking the photo (which might be far a greater amount, or might equally be a far lower one). It is an opportunity cost issue, not a time-and-materials cost issue.
The "cost to make from scratch" argument isn't really valid either: you have to consider supply and demand of the "images for license" market as generating the image from scratch is far from the only alternative option. There may be many photographers out there with similar images at a much cheaper rate - said images may be less perfect for the intended use, but the price/availability difference may make this an acceptable compromise.
Of course he has now set a fixed price for the image If you use it without negotiating a different price then this is what you can expect to have to pay when found. It might be a silly price, but that is the price: take it, leave it, or try negotiate something else - simply taking something for nothing because you disagree on price (the position taken by many people when they try to justify downloading a movie or game from an unofficial source) would not be acceptable.
Your point regarding only publishing the small version of the image publicly is a valid one, and the only way to protect the exclusivity of the larger format image: but this isn't perfect because once the larger format image is out there it is no longer protected because it may be used in a way that allows it to be copied and reused without permission (any contract with an exclusivity clause would need to be carefully worded to make it clear who is responsible for protecting said exclusive use: who (the creator or the licensee) should be responsible for chasing unlicensed users who have taken the image from the licensee's materials? (the source copied from being identified by the watermark you describe)).
Most photos are worthless except to the person who took them. If someone uses your photo without permission you have not lost the photo so it does not need replacing.
What he may have lost is the price he could have commanded for exclusive use of the image
By that logic, if he allowed all his images to be used for free, he has not lost anything but the "exclusive use fee".
You are missing two key points:
1) He is losing the expected income from the potential sale. If he says "yes you can use it for free", he will always gain $0. If he says "no you can't use it for free", he will gain $X * P[magazine will pay $X], which is almost certainly higher than $0.
2) If he allowed his pictures to be used for free, he'd drive down the average market value for such pictures. This would hurt him and other photographers in the long run.
I wasn't arguing against not using things for free (aside from agreeing with the parent post regarding small "sample" versions was a way to get the image noticed with lower risk of the full quality version being taken), I was questioning his way of calculating what he has lost through someone using the image without any sort of license.
Nothing is lost as such: the outfit using the image for nothing probably wasn't a potential sale anyway. This is copyright infringement, not theft. While setting his price any way he likes is his right, and he can sue that amount if someone uses the image without permission if he wants, this and "why you can't use the image for free or for credit" are separate issues which should not be conflated in this way. There is a big difference between someone asking for permission to use the image under different times (a lower, perhaps zero, price) and someone using the image without license - they are completely separate issues. One requires negotiation or just a straight no, and it then goes away. In the other case there may be need for legal redress.
A) Price comes first, not cost. In the real world clearing prices are justified based on how much the buyer is finally willing to pay for something, not how much it cost the seller to make it. If no one wants to buy a photograph for 6000$, then the market does not exist at that price. If the seller believes his cost is greater than the price quoted by his buyer, he should move to another more profitable business venture.
B) that said, digital technology has reduced the cost of entry and the cost of repeat production greatly, had ansel adams to take that very shot, the "replacement cost" of that photograph would have been much much higher. The cost of continuing to take photographs is also fairly minimal compared to earlier. The buyers price flexibility has not changed while your ability to produce at a lower cost has improved considerably.
C) You cannot equate yourself with a restaurant or a secretary or a writer in these companies, they unlike you are paid to continue working on a daily basis, whereas you're expecting to be paid for work that is already done. once. When you order your lunch today it costs the chef x $, order the same lunch tomorrow costs him another x $. But regardless of how many prints someone buys of your work, the cost to you does not increase. In other words, the legitimate product is not "one print", it is the whole set of prints that you expect it to sell over its lifetime. If you can guarantee that a print is exclusive, then you can legitimately expect the kind of amount conventional economic calculation leads you to value your photograph at ( im not talking about 6612$, thats insane )
D) The true comparison is to that of a restaurant that comes up for one day, makes an innovate dish, and then exits the business the next day and expects to be paid whenever someone else makes the dish elsewhere. No one does this because you can not run a profitable venture or even make up your costs based on this mindset - based on one sessions sales. And draconian IP laws aside, the only way to make a profit in that venture is to stay in business and keep at producing that dish over and over again, and more over, innovating with new standout dishes. And as a photographer you should learn to treat yourself, like the restaurant above, as a service industry, not just a product industry.
The machinery needed to produce a ballpoint pen costs the best part of $10m. A ballpoint pen costs 20 cents.
Cameras are expensive. Photographs are almost worthless. Supply utterly outstrips demand, especially for shots like landscapes that have great appeal for amateur photographers but little commercial utility.
Ten years ago, you could name every paparazzo working in London. They were a small circle of time-served photogs who knew everyone, and whom everyone knew. There was an infrastructure of couriers and darkrooms to get images from film to press in time. They spent years cultivating relationships with celebrities, doormen and nightclub owners. Today, there are countless PJ students and teenagers hurtling around Soho on scooters. With a cheap DSLR and a smartphone, an image can be on the front page of dailymail.com in 20 minutes.
The new breed see their work as a more exciting alternative to working weekends in a shop. Most of them are happy to get a quarter of what images used to sell for. They shoot using the modern equivalent of "f/8 and be there" and need practically no technical skill. Rather than cultivating relationships and building sources, many of them rely on Twitter. Unlike the previous generation, many of them are happy to tip each other off and share information. It's now scarcely possible to make a proper living and most of the old-timers are shooting commercial work or weddings.
That's all fine, but then there's no excuse for a publication to use a specific photo without the photographer's permission and without payment. If the photographer wants to charge $6.6K for that photo, and it's not worth $6.6K to you because you can get a Creative Commons one for free that's almost as good, then use the CC one.
> It's now scarcely possible to make a proper living and most
> of the old-timers are shooting commercial work or weddings.
Strange you should say that, as we actually hired an ex photo-journalist to do our wedding photos as we didn't want any posed nonsense, just genuine photos of people as they naturally were. The photos that we received were amazing and we were really happy with the results.
I spoke to him on the day of the wedding and he gave me almost the exact same story you've just posted.
It seems to me that every industry that relies on technology gets seriously disrupted when the technology becomes cheap enough - printing, publishing, photography and I'm sure there are many more.
Kind of. Let's not forget that most wedding photographers explicitly own the rights to the photos they take of your wedding, and have print and digital packages they explicitly push both to you and to your friends and family as part of their offering. Some wedding photographers don't even offer the digital pictures as part of their base packages.
Our wedding photographer gave us a DVD with everything and an explicit release to do anything we wanted with them. She was very forward thinking and she seemed to be doing very well for herself.
If you push the issue, you can get your full res digital photos. If nothing else, find a photographer who is trying to break in to the business, and who is still small time. That's what we did for our wedding, and we got really great photos (both posed and candid, as the photographers were actually a husband-wife combo, one doing each), as well as a full dvd with every single photo they took, and the rights to do whatever we wanted with them.
most wedding photographers explicitly own the rights to the photos they take of your wedding
Like most things, that's negotiable. When I went looking for a photographer for our wedding, one of the first questions I asked was "How much extra do you want for a copyright assignment?"
The additional charge varied from $0-500. The ladies we chose -- though primarily for other reasons -- were in $0 group.
"""Cameras are expensive. Photographs are almost worthless. Supply utterly outstrips demand, especially for shots like landscapes that have great appeal for amateur photographers but little commercial utility."""
Really? Then the photographer could say: if that's so, go use ANOTHER picture, because I don't fu*n supply mine.
You can't have it both ways, i.e the picture is worthless AND I still insist on using it.
True, but at the same time you shouldn't be hosting your pictures on the internet where anyone can copy it if you want to charge money for it. And you shouldn't let your customers either.
If I was to place some proprietary code on a public git, or just display it on my public webpage, should I get angry if people take it and don't pay me for it? Same with music, if you place it on the internet expect it to be out there. That's the nature of the medium. And trying to fight that is stupid, even if you are deserving of compensation.
"""True, but at the same time you shouldn't be hosting your pictures on the internet where anyone can copy it if you want to charge money for it. """
This is "blame the victim". Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain.
"""If I was to place some proprietary code on a public git, or just display it on my public webpage, should I get angry if people take it and don't pay me for it?"""
Yeah, you should.
It's the same if you posted some GPL code on a public git, and someone took it and build a closed system with it.
In both cases, the creator/owner or something did not have his wishes and copyright respected.
The same way we insist on people/companies respecting GPL copyright licenses, we should respect other people's licenses for THEIR stuff.
"Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain."
This is where I find your point to fall apart. The internet is NOT under the laws of any given nation and I doubt very much if some nations even have a sense of Public Domain or copyright. And even the ones that do can hardly agree on common terms.
So really your statement should be "Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain in certain jurisdictions if covered by applicable copyright laws"
And that is why it is stupid to expect something you post on the internet to not ever be copied without your permission.
Even more stupid; expecting the legal system of different countries to fairly and efficiently protect your IP, especially if you don't already have large stacks of money to buy lawyers with.
Wait, lawyers cost money and the legal systems of different countries aren't perfect in every way? Welp time to roll over and let other people take my work for free without incident.
"""his is where I find your point to fall apart. The internet is NOT under the laws of any given nation and I doubt very much if some nations even have a sense of Public Domain or copyright. And even the ones that do can hardly agree on common terms."""
Actually, almost all nations have standard international agreements on this matters. Also, tons of common abuses are from the US and EU themselves, that very much agree on common terms.
I'm sure some people are complaining because a web outlet in Kazakstan used their pictures, but those are not many...
(Not entirely relevant derail: it would be easy to get started in plastic ballpoint pen manufacturing for 0.5% of your stated figure (just google it), though no doubt you could actually spend $10m).
Actually, even this is less true than it used to be—hence your comment, "With a cheap DSLR and a smartphone [. . .]" You can find stuff the pros were using a few years ago for a fraction of what they paid; a used Canon 5D full frame camera goes for under $1,000 these days (and it'll probably be less when the 5d Mark III hits), and older Rebels like the XTi can be had for ~300. I'm sure things are similar on the Nikon / Sony / etc. side, although I'm less familiar.
Cheap cameras are yielding all kinds of interesting social (cops being unhappy at having their once-deniable brutality filmed, "sexting") and economic (like your paparazzo) effects.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 275 ms ] threadIf you do something and what you do costs much more than the market value of its output, make sure it's not your job. Hobbies usually fall in this category.
In the same way that a liquid betting market, the price is a reasonable estimate for probability, in a any liquid market, the price is a reasonable estimate of value.
Is it not a tautology? Is there a definition of value that is substantially different from "the equilibrium price in a perfect market"?
Let's forget the sunk cost for a minute. What happens if the price per item is less than the variable cost per item? Is that "unfair"? No, that's precisely how firms go out of business, when no one wants to pay (i.e. there is no demand) for the products they sell.
This is not an argument for plagiarism / piracy. Capitalist markets do need strong property ownership laws and enforcement.
He went in to borrow an eBook, but the librarian said "Oh I'm sorry, that copy is currently on loan at the moment".
Kinda defeats the whole point of things being digital...
It's great if you're doing a research paper on something non-technical, but not so great if you want a current book on anything relating to computers. Even quantity-limited eBooks would solve that.
> * As someone mentioned, THIS single photo didn’t cost me $6,612, but if you wanted to create it, from scratch, that is what is involved. So I consider it the replacement value if it’s stolen, or how much my lawyer will send you a bill for if it’s found being used without my permission.*
I hope he's never pirated a film or he could owe the studio millions and millions of dollars.
He should be arguing that it is expensive to take photos, and that any sales of them need to add up to cover initial and future costs. He should also be arguing that they are paying not just for the expense of taking it, but for his skill and time.
By arguing that one photo is worth that much, he is doing neither and looks like a moron.
I don't see why he would use this value as a basis for damages incurred though, since even someone publishing his photo without licensing it, hasn't taken (stolen) the photo from him. "Replacement value" has no meaning in this digital context.
In my opinion, there's no relation whatsoever between the cost of taking the photo and the damages he should seek. I think the damages should be correlated with the licensing value of the photo, majored appropriately for not acquiring licensing prior to using it.
While I am not denying him of the photo, I would of course be denying him of the revenue he would have earned had I licenced it from him, and would be entitled to demand that, and some more. If he had said that he would sue for $6k in punative costs, fair enough. Or even if he had said that he values his art at that price, and therefore that is what he charges for a single license.
Take Hollywood as an example, when they go after someone for illegally downloading a film they don't ask for the cost of a cinema ticket, or a cost of a DVD, they want a lot more than that. They don't however say "this film cost us £40m to create, that is it's replacement value, you now owe us £40m for downloading it".
No, he doesn't still "have the photo" as in "no damage done".
He has a digital file, but he just lost BOTH the exclusivity of the photo AND his say in how his work should be distributed.
Which is still so obviously moronic, that I don't even know why I bother pointing this out. Replacement value of a photo has to include the price of the camera it was taken with? This would be true if he used a brand new camera for each photo.
I get his point, of course, and (kind of) agree with him, but his argument is weak.
He didn't argue that that was the cost of viewing his photograph, he argued that his is what he would be looking for if you used it for commercial gain without permission.
Some photographs do sell for millions of dollars; many news photographs sell for thousands despite the photographer having no skill and having just been in the right place at the right time.
Do you actually now how much a magazine pays to use a single photograph?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/nov/12/w...
Cost to purchase doesn't have to be tied to cost to produce, plenty of people buy Gucci without thinking that Gucci is spending 100% of what you pay on the materials.
Yes, a photograph can sell for seven figures, but not generally speaking because that's how much the equipment used to take it costs, but because of how it is valued as art.
Regarding the value of the photo, I highly doubt he believes a single photo is worth $6,612. He is merely trying to explain that he should be paid for his work, and he has. Arguing that it is expensive to take photos wouldn't have gotten your attention. This got your attention. He won.
Edit: I have absolutely no affiliation with Mueller nor have I heard of him prior to this article, but was bothered by the negative and deliberately ignorant comments posted here. Very unlike Hacker News...
Gary Larson gets to say that his works don't appear online and the creators of Penny Arcade get to put all their work online and make money indirectly. The point is that they as creators get to choose.
We can go back and forth all day about if you copy a photograph without the photographer's permission you have stolen from them, but what you have done is violate his/her copyright.
In recent days, we've all been applauding Louis C.K. for the approach he took distributing his stand-up video. Some have been saying that all video content should follow that model. This ignores the fact that DRM-free online distribution was his choice, and every content creator should be free to choose what method works best for them.
I personally think the author should have included the cost in hours and education to get him to the skill level he has today. His cost of living vs. how many photographs of that quality he makes is also valid in how he prices his work. The point he was trying to make, though, is that this is not just a hobby for him and the idea that his work is not free is worth ranting about.
"Deserves to be paid". Humbug. That's the beginnings of an aristocracy that "deserve" to rule.
I've collected all my navel fluff for the past 10 years in jars. Give me a million dollars! (not really)
But you should make sure your CFO can explain and your marketing department has a deep understanding.
And consider taking some accounting and micro-econ courses when you have the chance.
ESPECIALLY if you are the technical founder....
Well it depends on the way the photo is used. If i just save it as my wallpaper (I'd copy it from my browser cache, etc), it is free for me. Complaining about this makes no sense, or overlaying it with a transparent image..
But, if i, having done nothing in its creation, try to make some money from it (like putting it on a magazine), then the actual creator needs to get some value from what I gain. It will be the ethical thing to do. In this case John Mueller, will should morally have the right to accept or deny my request to reshare/use it.
The problem with photography is that you're never dealing with ORIGINAL ART. When John or I give a JPEG to a magazine or website, we're not _losing_ anything. This is the same argument that the RIAA and MPAA have tried to spin for over a decade.
I sell prints of my photos, and as long as no one else sets up shop and starts selling cheaper copies, I don't see a problem with sites and magazines using my photos.
The basic gist is: You have spent $6k. You can either have your photo in some magazine, or not. You can have that free publicity, or not. The only way you are 'losing' money is if the magazine would've paid you in the first place -- but again, for a non-original piece of art that they're (almost certainly) not getting an exclusive license on... the going rate isn't very much anyway.
Guess what, here's[1] 325000 photographs of sunsets anyone can use on their magazine for free. You've just been priced out of the market.
[1]: https://secure.flickr.com/search/?l=comm&q=sunset
If people decide that this photo has a particular merit, then that is worth something. Of course, that's an entirely subjective issue and will vary from person to person.
If someone considers it a true œuvre d'art then the post is meaningless, because the available resolution isn't enough for a decent print at full page, and so nobody can "steal" it; they'll need to contact him regardless.
Several of those 300k are mine, by the way, and they are indeed free to use, assuming I am credited as required by the license. Of course, there are countless stories of magazines ignoring even this very simple requirement.
One is even in use by a state park on one of their signs, which is somehow particularly gratifying.
I really need to go take a pic of that sign.
[1] http://www.johnbmueller.com/index2.php?v=v1
It's like the 'Picasso Principle' where a woman approached Picasso for a sketch, he did something in 5 minutes and quoted her $10,000.
She said 'it only took you 5 minutes' and his response was 'no, it took me a lifetime'.
Full read here: http://bit.ly/A8ABL4
Tapping with a hammer ......................... $ 10.00 Knowing where to tap .......................... $990.00
Both fixed the problem, but the expert isn't worth any less than the guy who put in tons of man-hours.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.asp
Just like he (or any photograph with a reputation) is able to set a very high price because of his quality seal, he doesn't have the right to bitch about how much he thinks the picture worths. If you go out in the market then play by the rules. And the rules are: any product is worth whatever amount the consumer is willing to pay for it. That's what an open market is about. If you don't like it, don't get into it. Simple as that.
Ok, using it without permission is a simple legal matter. Bitching about how much he thinks he should be paid... honestly that is no one else's problem.
Too many people forget this and, IMHO, thereby fail to appreciate the creative work. Waxing poetic, but the view from the top of the mountain doesn't mean as near as much if you didn't climb up it.
The internet is not about content. It's about distribution. It costs a LOT of money to use a human -- the artist -- to "distribute" that image from nature onto his digital camera. From there it costs zero to distribute it to the rest of the world.
The answer is to tie the initial "distribution" of the data with the end consumer. So share the small image for free with whomever wants to see it, then charge a small fortune for a steganographically watermarked 10MB one. If you "sign" your images with a tamper-proof record of whom the recipient is, who you are, and perhaps a personalized message, not only can you track the image, you increase its value for the buyer. It's a good thing for both patron and artist.
ADD: As a real-world example of how this works, take my funny picture collection. (http://caption-of-the-day.com) I have a hobby of collecting funny pictures. Finally decided to put them all on a blog.
Now many of these pictures are actually web comics, or demotivators, or whatever. I want to credit each artist, but I'm just some schmuck collecting funny pictures. I don't have time to research each and every one.
But with watermarking I don't have to. Most of the times whoever made the image also put a watermark on it pointing back to their website. So instead of "lifting" the pictures, I'm actually providing free advertising for the artist. Artists compete to have their work distributed for free. Consumers become big fans of certain brands and help the artists advertise. Think of how worse this system would be if the artists controlled everything. DRM is a menace. The business models might be different, but The technology community has solved the exact problem this photographer is concerned about.
Secondly, whilst watermarking works for funny pictures, or people who solely sell artwork, it isn't something I would class as a solution. For people who mainly want to share their work, but simply don't want it ripped off, it's ruining the original artwork. Watermarks are ugly.
Also, the OP says he's not concerned with distribution...
I read his concerns about distribution a different way.
If you give your photo away for “credit” then the best possible scenario for you is someone will see your photo, contact you, and ask if they could borrow one of your photos… for credit. Try this… next time you’re at dinner, tell your waiter you’ll tell all your friends how good the service was if he gives you dinner for free.
It occurs to me that as much as I hate DRM, I'm actually making a "DRM-light" argument.
I think it's possible to have a file format in which the artist "signs" his work, perhaps along with whomever he sold it to -- a secure provenance chain. The payment provider would perform this service as part of the digital transfer.
That way you could distribute anything you want, however you want. The value would be in the distribution chain.
I'm a hobby photographer and professional programmer and author. Believe me, I know the pain this guy is experiencing. But the simple fact is bits are worthless. The photos of Ansel Adams aren't worth nearly as much anymore. But the provenance of a piece of work, being able to show that it came directly from the artist, perhaps with a personalized message on the back? That's priceless.
The economy just isn't based on physical goods as much as it used to be.
(BTW, "click to view" is supposed to slide out a section where I provide my own snarky comments. That way if I decide to use one of the images in a presentation some day I've already got a few jokes lined up. Works on FF 8.0 in Ubuntu for me, but I'll look into it.)
On your home page, go to the second post, and click...
You're javascript only slides things with the id sampleOuter. As you have multiple entries with the id sampleOuter on your homepage, most browsers will pick the first.
If you're intent is to slide open ALL of them, I'd use a class, rather than an ID.
If you're intent is to just slide open the one that's clicked on, you need each "sampleOuter" to have a unique identifier you can select it on. You can then pass that to your "toggleSampleView" method.
HTH.
While I agree with his main point regarding letting someone use your output "for credit", judging the cost of a photo like this is more than somewhat bogus and makes his argument sound silly (so the people that need to listen to his correct point will just turn off long before they get to it).
The replacement value for a photo has nothing to has very little to do with what it cost to take the photo, or what it would cost the user to have the photo taken especially for them.
Most photos are worthless except to the person who took them. If someone uses your photo without permission you have not lost the photo so it does not need replacing.
What he may have lost is the price he could have commanded for exclusive use of the image, because he can no longer sell/license exclusive use (as it has already been used). So what he would need reimbursing for is the value he could have gained through such licensing (plus any relevant legal and admin fees), not the cost of taking the photo (which might be far a greater amount, or might equally be a far lower one). It is an opportunity cost issue, not a time-and-materials cost issue.
The "cost to make from scratch" argument isn't really valid either: you have to consider supply and demand of the "images for license" market as generating the image from scratch is far from the only alternative option. There may be many photographers out there with similar images at a much cheaper rate - said images may be less perfect for the intended use, but the price/availability difference may make this an acceptable compromise.
Of course he has now set a fixed price for the image If you use it without negotiating a different price then this is what you can expect to have to pay when found. It might be a silly price, but that is the price: take it, leave it, or try negotiate something else - simply taking something for nothing because you disagree on price (the position taken by many people when they try to justify downloading a movie or game from an unofficial source) would not be acceptable.
Your point regarding only publishing the small version of the image publicly is a valid one, and the only way to protect the exclusivity of the larger format image: but this isn't perfect because once the larger format image is out there it is no longer protected because it may be used in a way that allows it to be copied and reused without permission (any contract with an exclusivity clause would need to be carefully worded to make it clear who is responsible for protecting said exclusive use: who (the creator or the licensee) should be responsible for chasing unlicensed users who have taken the image from the licensee's materials? (the source copied from being identified by the watermark you describe)).
What he may have lost is the price he could have commanded for exclusive use of the image
By that logic, if he allowed all his images to be used for free, he has not lost anything but the "exclusive use fee".
You are missing two key points:
1) He is losing the expected income from the potential sale. If he says "yes you can use it for free", he will always gain $0. If he says "no you can't use it for free", he will gain $X * P[magazine will pay $X], which is almost certainly higher than $0.
2) If he allowed his pictures to be used for free, he'd drive down the average market value for such pictures. This would hurt him and other photographers in the long run.
Nothing is lost as such: the outfit using the image for nothing probably wasn't a potential sale anyway. This is copyright infringement, not theft. While setting his price any way he likes is his right, and he can sue that amount if someone uses the image without permission if he wants, this and "why you can't use the image for free or for credit" are separate issues which should not be conflated in this way. There is a big difference between someone asking for permission to use the image under different times (a lower, perhaps zero, price) and someone using the image without license - they are completely separate issues. One requires negotiation or just a straight no, and it then goes away. In the other case there may be need for legal redress.
B) that said, digital technology has reduced the cost of entry and the cost of repeat production greatly, had ansel adams to take that very shot, the "replacement cost" of that photograph would have been much much higher. The cost of continuing to take photographs is also fairly minimal compared to earlier. The buyers price flexibility has not changed while your ability to produce at a lower cost has improved considerably.
C) You cannot equate yourself with a restaurant or a secretary or a writer in these companies, they unlike you are paid to continue working on a daily basis, whereas you're expecting to be paid for work that is already done. once. When you order your lunch today it costs the chef x $, order the same lunch tomorrow costs him another x $. But regardless of how many prints someone buys of your work, the cost to you does not increase. In other words, the legitimate product is not "one print", it is the whole set of prints that you expect it to sell over its lifetime. If you can guarantee that a print is exclusive, then you can legitimately expect the kind of amount conventional economic calculation leads you to value your photograph at ( im not talking about 6612$, thats insane )
D) The true comparison is to that of a restaurant that comes up for one day, makes an innovate dish, and then exits the business the next day and expects to be paid whenever someone else makes the dish elsewhere. No one does this because you can not run a profitable venture or even make up your costs based on this mindset - based on one sessions sales. And draconian IP laws aside, the only way to make a profit in that venture is to stay in business and keep at producing that dish over and over again, and more over, innovating with new standout dishes. And as a photographer you should learn to treat yourself, like the restaurant above, as a service industry, not just a product industry.
Cameras are expensive. Photographs are almost worthless. Supply utterly outstrips demand, especially for shots like landscapes that have great appeal for amateur photographers but little commercial utility.
Ten years ago, you could name every paparazzo working in London. They were a small circle of time-served photogs who knew everyone, and whom everyone knew. There was an infrastructure of couriers and darkrooms to get images from film to press in time. They spent years cultivating relationships with celebrities, doormen and nightclub owners. Today, there are countless PJ students and teenagers hurtling around Soho on scooters. With a cheap DSLR and a smartphone, an image can be on the front page of dailymail.com in 20 minutes.
The new breed see their work as a more exciting alternative to working weekends in a shop. Most of them are happy to get a quarter of what images used to sell for. They shoot using the modern equivalent of "f/8 and be there" and need practically no technical skill. Rather than cultivating relationships and building sources, many of them rely on Twitter. Unlike the previous generation, many of them are happy to tip each other off and share information. It's now scarcely possible to make a proper living and most of the old-timers are shooting commercial work or weddings.
Strange you should say that, as we actually hired an ex photo-journalist to do our wedding photos as we didn't want any posed nonsense, just genuine photos of people as they naturally were. The photos that we received were amazing and we were really happy with the results.
I spoke to him on the day of the wedding and he gave me almost the exact same story you've just posted.
It seems to me that every industry that relies on technology gets seriously disrupted when the technology becomes cheap enough - printing, publishing, photography and I'm sure there are many more.
http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/02/03/in-thrall-to-scarcity
If what you sell is not scarce... watch out.
Like most things, that's negotiable. When I went looking for a photographer for our wedding, one of the first questions I asked was "How much extra do you want for a copyright assignment?"
The additional charge varied from $0-500. The ladies we chose -- though primarily for other reasons -- were in $0 group.
Really? Then the photographer could say: if that's so, go use ANOTHER picture, because I don't fu*n supply mine.
You can't have it both ways, i.e the picture is worthless AND I still insist on using it.
Who told you that "more publicity" (or whatever else snake oil i-want-your-content-for-free types sell), is considered a "gain" by all?
If I was to place some proprietary code on a public git, or just display it on my public webpage, should I get angry if people take it and don't pay me for it? Same with music, if you place it on the internet expect it to be out there. That's the nature of the medium. And trying to fight that is stupid, even if you are deserving of compensation.
This is "blame the victim". Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain.
"""If I was to place some proprietary code on a public git, or just display it on my public webpage, should I get angry if people take it and don't pay me for it?"""
Yeah, you should.
It's the same if you posted some GPL code on a public git, and someone took it and build a closed system with it.
In both cases, the creator/owner or something did not have his wishes and copyright respected.
The same way we insist on people/companies respecting GPL copyright licenses, we should respect other people's licenses for THEIR stuff.
This is where I find your point to fall apart. The internet is NOT under the laws of any given nation and I doubt very much if some nations even have a sense of Public Domain or copyright. And even the ones that do can hardly agree on common terms.
So really your statement should be "Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain in certain jurisdictions if covered by applicable copyright laws"
And that is why it is stupid to expect something you post on the internet to not ever be copied without your permission.
Actually, almost all nations have standard international agreements on this matters. Also, tons of common abuses are from the US and EU themselves, that very much agree on common terms.
I'm sure some people are complaining because a web outlet in Kazakstan used their pictures, but those are not many...
Actually, even this is less true than it used to be—hence your comment, "With a cheap DSLR and a smartphone [. . .]" You can find stuff the pros were using a few years ago for a fraction of what they paid; a used Canon 5D full frame camera goes for under $1,000 these days (and it'll probably be less when the 5d Mark III hits), and older Rebels like the XTi can be had for ~300. I'm sure things are similar on the Nikon / Sony / etc. side, although I'm less familiar.
Cheap cameras are yielding all kinds of interesting social (cops being unhappy at having their once-deniable brutality filmed, "sexting") and economic (like your paparazzo) effects.