For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path

For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: March 29, 2010
Amateur photographers, happy to accept small checks for snapshots, are underpricing professionals.


I made some comments about this issue last year in this post: http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/2009/06/intersection-of-onlinesharing-culture.html. Since then, I made that Faustian bargain of getting an image of mine on a book cover without payment save a few copies of the book (although I haven't gotten them yet, CRC Press). The publisher said they had no budget for images, it would likely sell very few copies (a very technical book), etc... should I have done it?

Conversely, if you are a corporation, why shouldn't you find free or cheap photography instead of paying for it? Photography has been freelance for sometime, and never unionized that I am aware of.

End of the year non-review #4: copyright and the public domain

Edging closer to the mission of where I work:


Happy Public Domain Day!
We need serious copyright reform. What is the value of most of the works older than say fifty years?

Data that should be free, since it's governmentally produced and therefore in the public domain already:

Invaluable US government docs to be scanned and posted

Making a Brouhaha in the Blogosphere -- Peter Brantley
1.8 million pages of US federal case law to go online for free
Carl Malamud Takes on WestLaw

See an amazing amount of rescued video and data at: The Internet Archive

Libraries or Pirate Places?