I hope everyone understands, including the authors themselves, that each author in this back-and-forth is correct. The right to give and the right to charge are inherently personal decisions that only the owner of the photo can make.
This was the main frustration that I had with the "this photograph is not free" comments, as well as the tone the author of this article takes. It doesn't matter what the commentators claim the various photos are 'worth' -- it's not their right to speculate, and just because you released your material CCL, you don't have the right to feel more privileged than someone who chose to exercise their right to be compensated.
Not to digress too much from your original comment (which I completely agree with) but I think there's a certain "smugness" that I see associated with people who release anything as free--as if somehow the act of benevolence has put them on a plane above those who choose not to. I think that's unfortunate for multiple reasons; not the least of which is that people should be commended for sharing things under free / open licenses and I'm far less inclined to do so if they get all smug about it (this applies whether the "things" in question are software, photographs, writings, music, film, etc).
I agree with both authors; but I find this particular article far more obnoxious than the one to which its responding--again, because it comes across quite smug.
The right to give and the right to charge are inherently personal decisions that only the owner of the photo can make.
It's not that simple. There are two "rights" here: 1) the right to publish a photo, and 2) the ability to restrict other people's freedom to copy the photo.
The first one is simple -- you can choose to publish your photos, or you can choose to keep them for yourself and never publish.
The second one -- the ability to restrict other people's actions on further distribution -- is a personal decision only for a limited amount of time, and only in certain circumstances and for certain works. Even if your personal decision is not to let me publish photos shot by you in my "Silly photographs" magazine, I will be able to do so once you die + 70 years (according to my country laws). Why is this? Because every author's work belongs to public once author publishes it. The author is just given a temporary monopoly on it. This was intended to make authors produce more such works; for example, here's what US Constitution says:
[Congress shall have the power] to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
This is not entirely accurate. The original "this photograph is not free" article wasn't an attempt to prevent his own images from being copied. It was an attempt to influence OTHER photographers not to give away their photos for free.
I've worked for a long time in the photography industry. In my experience there are two things that justifiably piss photographers off in a very major way:
1. Getting their photo ripped off without permission, because it loses them money.
2. Seeing a publication use another photographer's photo for free (even with permission), because it loses EVERYBODY money.
If good photographers are constantly giving photos away and not charging, professional photography prices and value naturally goes down. It's kind of a tragedy of the commons - photographers who DO give away work get more recognition, but they lower the overall value of their industry.
> The right to give and the right to charge are inherently personal decisions
Actually, in the U.S.A. the right to restrict others from "using" "your" "intellectual property" is granted by the government and only for limited times (in theory). The default natural state is that everyone has the right to share, reuse, etc everyone's intangible creative works.
What you are saying is true, however for products for which supply exceeds demand and which can be easily copied, then charging for such products does not work so well.
For example, in the early days of our industry, many people buying licensed software were doing so because copying on floppy disks was error prone and packaged software was getting distributed on storage of higher quality. Licensed software also worked as expected, while software copied from friends had all sorts of "surprises". Plus it came with a useful manual, which was great prior to the Internet.
Our economy is based on scarcity. If scarcity is only artificial, then the model breaks down. You simply can't appeal to people's feelings, not after decades of teaching people to embrace individualism.
I don't think this is a fair comparison. From what I've understood by reading both posts is that each writer comes from a different background(I can't think of a better word right now) and that's what's causing this difference of opinion.
The first writer is making a living from photography as stated at the bottom of his post: "John B. Mueller is a photographer based in Ventura County, California."
The second writer seems to be doing this as a hobby. At least I'm assuming so since he's been taking photos for 27 years and claims that he has not made any money from it. So I really don't think that this is a fair comparison.
Unfortunately, the "right to charge" is something that is almost unenforceable in the day of the internet. If you base your business model on this idea, you will spend a lot of time fighting a losing battle against the fact that information is freely exchangeable around the whole world.
"I give my work away for free because it makes other people smile and I like that" is not a rebuttal to "people shouldn't be taking other people's work for free if the author doesn't want them to". If anything it's just a smug attempt at being holier-than-thou.
This author is partially refuting the original, though. It's not just saying "I give away my photos", it's also saying that it is unrealistic to expect to make money from photography because so many people have a camera and the tools to publish their photographs.
I don't really agree with this because the skill and artistic inclination of the photographer is still a critical factor in how the photo turns out. But it is an argument against the original article, make no mistake there.
This is a really interesting case about how we need to confront the issue of rights when something is made public. It seems a little ludicrous to suggest that something like the Eiffel tower lights display is copyright, when it is obviously put on for the public purpose of having millions of people see it.
On the other hand, it seems ludicrous to demand that because someone puts a picture on their web page, it is now public in the same way, and that the creator should not be able to control the market for it.
I do think it is worth thinking about the idea that there is a threshold of publicness after which point a work ought to become subject to mandatory licensing. The intuition is that if a work is kept sufficiently private, it is not involved in a substitutable market for similar items. If it is made sufficiently public, then it is competing in a market for other substitutable creative goods of the same sort. Another intuition is that there's a threshold of publicness after which it becomes fair to assume that the rightsholder is interested in wide distribution more than controlling use, or that after a certain threshold of publicness, a creative product has been introduced into the public sphere as a cultural artifact that others ought to be able to use freely.
Right now all we have is a binary move from rightsholder-retains-complete-rights to public domain, which has led to the craziness of current copyright law. If we had some intermediate stages of publicness and the rights split between creator and public, perhaps we could come up with something more sensible.
Yes it's ironic that the Eiffel Tower has copyrighted it's nighttime light display.
I don't think that any physical 3D object (ie: buildings) should be copyrightable, even statues or art displays. The fact that the Eiffel Tower, Sears Tower, and Empire State Building are iconic (and beautiful works of art themselves even) should not be enough to grant copyright.
Lets say I had such a picture and wanted to put it on my site. WOuld this disclaimer suffice? "If you are currently residing in France you are not legally allowed to see this picture. Please cover the picture with one hand during your visit"
Just remember: it's only in France and other countries that lack panoramafreiheit.
I thought the RIAA suing grandmas was bad, then I read about the panoramafreiheit situation in Europe. It's far, far more stupid than you can ever imagine.
"Most of all, I have realized a long time ago that in a world where everyone has a camera, a lot of free time and fantastic tools to publish stuff, there is not a lot of money to be made anymore by taking pictures."
For me that is the best rejoinder to the somewhat whiny tone of the "this photo is not free" post. The author has missed the point that certain types of photos are accurately valued at "free for credit", because it is easy to obtain them at that cost. His real beef should be with this fact, not the fact that people are asking him for photos at market prices.
We would all like to be able to charge money for things we would do anyway, but reality does not always oblige us. When my neighbor asked me for my grass clippings to add to his compost pile, I told him sure, but only if I could charge him $1000, based on the cost of my lawnmower, gas, and labor. After all, he will be able to use that compost as fertilizer eventually, and why should he profit from my hard work without compensating me? Sadly, my neighbor did not buy my argument, because grass clippings, like certain photos, are neither rare nor hard to come by.
I'm surprised that more people here aren't focusing on that line of the post. It was the most interesting line to me, and even more interesting is that your reaction was a mirror opposite of mine.
There is not a lot of money to be made anymore by taking competently focused, competently-exposed sunset pictures of the Eiffel Tower.
Great tools lower the barrier of entry for achieving technical competence in capturing an ever-widening variety of beautiful subjects. So for someone who expects to turn their ability to do that into a professional photography career, fine, "there is not a lot of money to be made in doing that."
But there is a shitload of money to be made taking pictures, even when a 100 megapixel camera and .96 lux 50mm prime lens can be had for the same price as a pack of cigarettes, because professional photographers tend not to get paid to walk around tourist destinations snapping pretty shit all year.
All of the professional fotogs I know are paid not for photos the have taken, but for photos people would like them to take. The photos that they have taken are just proof that if you hire them to take photos for you, they will be good.
In this way, I think this author's point of view is slightly more economically advantageous than the "this photo cost $6500" guy.
Or, "How not to make money selling software: a succinct illustration of cost-based and market-based (specifically, value-based) pricing in just two comment threads."
Why can Github charge FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR for a local install of Github and succeed, impressively so, despite a small army of nerds pointing out how inexpensive it is to run one's own Git server and Gitorious? Why does 37signals have an office with walls made of 37signalsium (really, seen it, it's fuzzy) and trendy furniture despite selling software that the nerdosphere can clearly duplicate? Why does Yammer even consider publishing a $5/user/month price for software that is among every web geek's top-5-most-likely-personal projects?
Answer: they don't sell gypsum.
Cost based pricing, which works for gypsum sales but not so much for software, suggests that the price of a nice photo should be the price of the gas to get to and from the photo shoot, possibly divided by the number of people interested in buying the photo, plus maybe throw a couple bucks in there and buy yourself something nice, photographer.
Value-based pricing says, "how much it cost me to create the photo is irrelevant". YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES, say the nerds. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS SAYING! But value-based pricing continues: "no, what matters is how much it would cost you to make that photo and how much benefit it brings".
How much it would cost you to make that photo: (say) $6000, perhaps divided by the number of different photos you'd take given the same setup (but then also scaled back up to account for the headcount or professional services required to take lots of pictures).
How much benefit? It depends. I could take 10,000 words listing out factors in figuring it out. Most importantly: what are the substitutes to this photo and how much do they cost? For some businesses, clip art of the Eiffel Tower suffices to bring 80-90% of the value. For others (like ad-sales print publications), comparables might also be very expensive.
Now, the extent to which the YOUR business benefit from my photo exceeds MY cost to produce the photo is MY ADVANTAGE IN PRODUCING PHOTOS (the extent to which your cost exceeds my cost is my "comparative advantage"†††, and if it's a positive number possibly suggests that I'm the one who should be doing the photos in any case, since you have better ways to put your money to use). Having an advantage is a good thing. Among other things, it's a key reason why software startups are lucrative, and why we don't all work on line-of-business software for non-software companies.
It's probably true that a photo of a sunset isn't worth $6,000. But, exclusivity aside, the value of the photo also has nothing to do with how much it cost the photographer to take each shot at the margin, and it has nothing to do with the cost to make each marginal sale. What matters is how much it costs the customer to replace that value with a substitute, and in that analysis the $6000 set-up cost, while not determinative, is relevant perspective.
The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow. Situationally, the nerdosphere oscillates between extremes when trying to compute valuations for stuff with intangible-seeming benefits. Today, the nerdosphere apparently thinks either (a) every photo is a precious snowflake or (b) photo costs should be scaled by the current price of hard disk storage. Yesterday, it was whether it's right for Github to charge per repo. Before that, it's whether it's fair to have markets for spec work like 99designs.
None of that matters. What matters is, is there a market for what you're selling, and will it clear based on the model you use to price stuff on the market. Clearly there is a market for high-quality photography. Clearly it is not a cost-based market like gypsum, or there would not exist sites selling photos with royalties attached, or photos costing hundreds of dollars --- which clearly those sites do exist. So instead of arguing about how much photos should cost --- because, again, they cost what the market says they cost, not what you think it costs to make them yourself --- think instead about how this discussion applies to your own work product. More than you think it does, is my guess.
††† (Actually this isn't all what comparative advantage is; comparative advantage says, if there's a market for widgets and a market for photos and you're better at widgets than photos and I'm better at photos than widgets, then I should do widgets and you should do photos, which is a subtly different idea, but the point stands either way.)
Being more on the business side than the development side, I completely identify with what you're saying. The statement that value is derived from the cost of the alternative is central to market thinkers, of which I identify myself as.
However! This statement struck me as out of place:
> The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow.
There is not 100% agreement on the moralism of copying digital goods. There is, agree or disagree, a lack of 100% acceptance of copyright as it stands today. This introduces an alternative that costs $0, which messes up the whole market equation. This moral conflict has to be resolved before you can arrive at a market price for digital goods.
††† (Actually this isn't all what comparative advantage is; comparative advantage says, if there's a market for widgets and a market for photos and you're better at widgets than photos and I'm better at photos than widgets, then I should do widgets and you should do photos, which is a subtly different idea, but the point stands either way.)
Surely this is supposed to be the other way around. If I'm better at photos than widgets, and you're better at widgets than photos, then I should do the photos and you should do the widgets ... right? Crazy pills?
Right. You're discrediting the Labor Theory of Value, variations of which are endlessly seductive and are always creeping back in as The Way Things Ought To Be.
>Value-based pricing says, "how much it cost me to create the photo is irrelevant".
Almost, but not quite. In the case of a hobbyist, yes it's irrelevant. But for a business, the cost to create should set the minimum cost they'd be prepared to charge (or at least be expecting to charge - you may find yourself discounting it below cost if you've already made it and fail to sell).
I do mostly agree though, and it always amuses me when I see people complaining about eBooks that cost more than dead tree ones. If it's not worth more to you, then don't buy it.
>The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow.
Again, not quite. Morality doesn't, or shouldn't, come into play when determining the price. But it does when it comes to how a "buyer" reacts to a price they don't like in relation to goods that have no marginal cost to produce a new copy - e.g. digital photo, movie download. If you don't like the price that's been set, but it's not going to cost the creator anything for you to simply take a copy for free, do you have any moral issue with that?
The comparative advantage the professional assignment or stock photographer brings to the table isn't just creating a "good enough" photograph, it's about creating the RIGHT photograph for the client.
This is why microstock and craigslist haven't completely destroyed the market, since the professional can reliably create the RIGHT photo for the assignment (or in the case of stock, consistently predict and create the exact images the target market needs).
But it does exert downward pressure. The photo editor/art buyer is always cost-conscious, and whereas she used to only have the option of professional-quality-work at professional rates, now there is a huge pool of "good enough" photos at vastly lower cost. Buyers of photography, as it turns out, aren't actually that discriminating, so more and more frequently they're opting for the "good enough" photo instead of the RIGHT photo.
And this is where the professionals start to get irked. It'd be one thing if the new competition were undercutting them with similar-quality work at lower cost. It's be they're being undercut by work that is often objectively lower in value to the client, and they know the client would be better served.
It's actually quite analogous to the issue of outsourcing: a vast new pool of cheaper but lower-quality labor supply becomes available, and many firms move operations overseas. The end-product is crappier but cheaper. Nobody actually cares about quality, and given the choice, they'll go for cheaper and "good enough" over expensive and good.
Interestingly, Apple is somehow managing to upend this paradigm by producing really-good quality product at premium-but-not-ridiculous prices through design and manufacturing innovation and exceptional marketing, and is taking back market share from the mid-tiers. I can't think of how the photo industry as a whole can accomplish this, though, since it's B2B rather than B2C, and it's an army of independent professionals and not a unified association. (There's a legal limit on how much the industry can coordinate: the major photographers' trade organization was fined for price-fixing years ago becaused they had published pricing guidelines.)
(DISCLAIMER: I worked in the photo industry for years, and still shoot the occasional assignment)
Nobody actually cares about quality, and given the choice, they'll go for cheaper and "good enough" over expensive and good.
I agree with your overall point. But this one is more nuanced. In things that are of little significance, "good enough" is, well, good enough, and people won't pay more than they have to.
But you can charge a premium for even a tiny advantage, when that advantage matters to the people buying. The very best baseball players are paid very well, but those right below the very best get a small faction of that, and those right below them get the joy of playing and not much else.
Closer to home, I recently spent over $400 (and know people that have spent much, much more) on a Go set with a solid spruce board, kaya bowls, and onyx stones because I valued the aesthetics when I played, even though I could get a perfectly workable cardboard set for $20. But I am highly cost sensitive in just about every other area of my life.
So ultimately, his money comes from Google advertisements, which are not free. He can afford to do photography as a hobby because he has income from another source, that can be traced back to a scarce good.
If all information goods were free, the power would shift to those who actually have something scarce to sell, which would likely mean fewer information goods of some kinds because some people at the margin could no longer afford to produce them if they were no longer able to generate an income by doing so.
I still love the fact that on the website of the original blog poster ( http://www.johnbmueller.com/index2.php?v=v1 ) that until yesterday he was illegally streaming music by a band (Frau Frau) along with his photo slideshow. I wonder how much he was paying the artists/bands? I guess nothing as since I notified him and the bands the music has strangely disappeared... I wonder how much he owes them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frou_Frou_(band)
As somebody who pretends to make art, I think that both sides of this argument are correct and valid. If you make art, and you want to charge whatever you want for it, more power to you and good luck. If you make art and give it away, awesome!
If you just make it and keep it to yourself, just for your own personal fulfillment, sweet!
Or all put another way, if you like somebody else's art, but object to their charging something for it, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from learning the craft and producing it yourself...and you might get even more out of it then.
Yet another example of the tension between scarcity and abundance.
Our economy is based on scarcity. Which means that anything abundant tend to see its price driven down to zero. Making a living by selling such goods as if they were scarce is increasingly difficult. Donations seems to work somewhat, though.
If everything (including food and housing) were abundant, we wouldn't even need money, and making a living out of music, photography, or software wouldn't even be discussed of. But we don't live in that world…
…Yet. The way things are evolving, more and more goods have the potential to be effectively abundant. Especially those who have bounded demand, like food (if I recall correctly, there is already more than enough food to feed the planet, if only it where correctly distributed). Work is being more and more automated, such that even human labour can eventually be made abundant (an especially vivid example is self-driving cars, which can bring down an entire profession). But scarcity isn't going anywhere, so we'd better prepare for a rather long transition.
I see several forms that transition could take. (i) More unemployment, more economic problems, more people starve and freeze despite the availability of food and housing. (ii) Reduction of the hours worked per week, while keeping the salaries up. (iii) Growth of actual wealth (Not of the GDP). (iv) artificial scarcity, driven by old corporation and institutions that just won't die.
I'd like to avoid (i) and (iv), but I'm afraid we already have evidence for them right now (especially (iv), see copyright and patents). I'd like to have (ii), but I'm not aware of any reliable metric about it. The last decades clearly demonstrate (iii), but I'm not sure we have as much as we could have.
Anyway, I'm not satisfied right now: abundance and scarcity clearly don't play well together. If someone has an idea about how we could make them, that could be terrific.
"I took the picture because I like taking pictures. I've invested into a lot of money into camera gear over the past 27 years or so and never made a dime from it. On the other hand, it has given me a lot of joy and pride. The joy to take beautiful pictures."
The author is an amateur photographer, he shares his work and people enjoy it. That's great.
There are also quite a few developers who contribute to open source projects. That doesn't mean that they or others can't ever charge for programming work or software products.
Some photographers license all of their work to the public domain, most professional photographers don't. I don't feel there's shame in that. People need to respect and adhere to the license a work is published in. The fact that you had to download a picture in your browser to view it doesn't mean you have the right to republish it.
The main thing I take away from this is that he is not a professional photographer. Of course an amateur can afford to give away photos for free! However, I'm not sure he even realizes that what he says doesn't make any sense for a professional photographer trying to earn his livelihood.
> On the other hand, it has given me a lot of joy and pride. The joy to take beautiful pictures. The pride of building the reputation of being a decent photographer. The pleasure to give away my work and see people smile. The satisfaction coming from the fact that my work is useful, seeing it's reused by others.
This is a nice sentiment. It reminded me of a quote from Richard Feynman on his thoughts about the Nobel Prize:
"I've already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out. The kick in the discovery. The observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me." ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMaBmik4VYg )
If you want to create art and sell it, great for you. Take all the necessary steps to protect your work from theft while at the same time raising awareness for your artistry.
If you want to create art to share with the rest of the world, great for you. Do so without strings attached and without expecting anything in return.
I see the purpose behind both posts, but they seem to be arguing over something that doesn't need to be argued over. Some people like to sell their software, some like to give it away. Neither is right, neither is wrong, the only context in which the actions can be judged are when they are done so through the artist...it is up to the artist to decide whether selling something or giving something away is right or wrong.
Unfortunately, pride and people's smiles are not yet valid currency anywhere, which is most likely the big issue of the author of "This photograph is not free".
This post ends with the opinion that there isn't a lot of money to be made in photography, since a lot of people have the tools to take/publish photographs. One could apply that to a number of fields, from logo design and music to coding. After all, everyone has a computer, a text editor and access to github.
Yes, these fields might not be as lucrative as they once were, or rather, they're more competitive, but there is a large step between that and giving away things for free.
I strongly recommend you do something, just in case you make it to the front. Your site is crawling (extremely slow) at the moment. It is just bound to get worse.
The underlying attitude that bothers me in these discussions on HN is that most of us are in the software business, so what it amounts to is "my intellectual property (software) is super valuable, and your intellectual property (photos, music, writing) is worthless". Do we really want to live in a world where people can't make a living from photography or writing or music?
That's the thing though: I do think the code that I write is fairly worthless. I do custom programming for a small company. The work I do is a competitive advantage for them, but it is so specific to them that even if I were to, say, get approval to open source the whole lot, they wouldn't lose a penny, nor would their competitors really gain anything. The value isn't in the IP, the value is in the fact that it enables them to get their work done quicker and better and be more responsive to their clients.
The code isn't the key part: the value is the fact that I can take complex and changing requirements and build them a one-off tool that does exactly what they want.
The code will be gone in five years, probably ten, as business needs will change.
I'd give you a strait answer, but do you realize that the Free Software Movement is much more widespread than royalty free photography or music?
Furthermore, among the crafts you mentioned, being a programmer is by far the less profitable one.
I'll untwist your twisted question. Honestly, why are you so worried about 'artists' and not worried about programmers?
Well said. I'm a journalist and photographer by trade. Any work I'm commissioned to do, I charge for. Anything I do for fun I release under Creative Commons for anyone to use.
We need to make a living, of course, but if you hold onto everything, it will die with you. Whereas in the public domain, your work becomes immortal.
[+] [-] aspir|14 years ago|reply
This was the main frustration that I had with the "this photograph is not free" comments, as well as the tone the author of this article takes. It doesn't matter what the commentators claim the various photos are 'worth' -- it's not their right to speculate, and just because you released your material CCL, you don't have the right to feel more privileged than someone who chose to exercise their right to be compensated.
[+] [-] bcrescimanno|14 years ago|reply
I agree with both authors; but I find this particular article far more obnoxious than the one to which its responding--again, because it comes across quite smug.
[+] [-] dchest|14 years ago|reply
It's not that simple. There are two "rights" here: 1) the right to publish a photo, and 2) the ability to restrict other people's freedom to copy the photo.
The first one is simple -- you can choose to publish your photos, or you can choose to keep them for yourself and never publish.
The second one -- the ability to restrict other people's actions on further distribution -- is a personal decision only for a limited amount of time, and only in certain circumstances and for certain works. Even if your personal decision is not to let me publish photos shot by you in my "Silly photographs" magazine, I will be able to do so once you die + 70 years (according to my country laws). Why is this? Because every author's work belongs to public once author publishes it. The author is just given a temporary monopoly on it. This was intended to make authors produce more such works; for example, here's what US Constitution says:
[Congress shall have the power] to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
[+] [-] yangez|14 years ago|reply
I've worked for a long time in the photography industry. In my experience there are two things that justifiably piss photographers off in a very major way:
1. Getting their photo ripped off without permission, because it loses them money.
2. Seeing a publication use another photographer's photo for free (even with permission), because it loses EVERYBODY money.
If good photographers are constantly giving photos away and not charging, professional photography prices and value naturally goes down. It's kind of a tragedy of the commons - photographers who DO give away work get more recognition, but they lower the overall value of their industry.
[+] [-] njharman|14 years ago|reply
Actually, in the U.S.A. the right to restrict others from "using" "your" "intellectual property" is granted by the government and only for limited times (in theory). The default natural state is that everyone has the right to share, reuse, etc everyone's intangible creative works.
[+] [-] bad_user|14 years ago|reply
For example, in the early days of our industry, many people buying licensed software were doing so because copying on floppy disks was error prone and packaged software was getting distributed on storage of higher quality. Licensed software also worked as expected, while software copied from friends had all sorts of "surprises". Plus it came with a useful manual, which was great prior to the Internet.
Our economy is based on scarcity. If scarcity is only artificial, then the model breaks down. You simply can't appeal to people's feelings, not after decades of teaching people to embrace individualism.
[+] [-] mohsen|14 years ago|reply
The first writer is making a living from photography as stated at the bottom of his post: "John B. Mueller is a photographer based in Ventura County, California."
The second writer seems to be doing this as a hobby. At least I'm assuming so since he's been taking photos for 27 years and claims that he has not made any money from it. So I really don't think that this is a fair comparison.
[+] [-] joelthelion|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] synth|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] funkah|14 years ago|reply
I don't really agree with this because the skill and artistic inclination of the photographer is still a critical factor in how the photo turns out. But it is an argument against the original article, make no mistake there.
[+] [-] miahi|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_cl...
[+] [-] gbhn|14 years ago|reply
On the other hand, it seems ludicrous to demand that because someone puts a picture on their web page, it is now public in the same way, and that the creator should not be able to control the market for it.
I do think it is worth thinking about the idea that there is a threshold of publicness after which point a work ought to become subject to mandatory licensing. The intuition is that if a work is kept sufficiently private, it is not involved in a substitutable market for similar items. If it is made sufficiently public, then it is competing in a market for other substitutable creative goods of the same sort. Another intuition is that there's a threshold of publicness after which it becomes fair to assume that the rightsholder is interested in wide distribution more than controlling use, or that after a certain threshold of publicness, a creative product has been introduced into the public sphere as a cultural artifact that others ought to be able to use freely.
Right now all we have is a binary move from rightsholder-retains-complete-rights to public domain, which has led to the craziness of current copyright law. If we had some intermediate stages of publicness and the rights split between creator and public, perhaps we could come up with something more sensible.
[+] [-] unreal37|14 years ago|reply
I don't think that any physical 3D object (ie: buildings) should be copyrightable, even statues or art displays. The fact that the Eiffel Tower, Sears Tower, and Empire State Building are iconic (and beautiful works of art themselves even) should not be enough to grant copyright.
[+] [-] gizzlon|14 years ago|reply
Lets say I had such a picture and wanted to put it on my site. WOuld this disclaimer suffice? "If you are currently residing in France you are not legally allowed to see this picture. Please cover the picture with one hand during your visit"
[+] [-] tommorris|14 years ago|reply
I thought the RIAA suing grandmas was bad, then I read about the panoramafreiheit situation in Europe. It's far, far more stupid than you can ever imagine.
[+] [-] sunchild|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrgoldenbrown|14 years ago|reply
For me that is the best rejoinder to the somewhat whiny tone of the "this photo is not free" post. The author has missed the point that certain types of photos are accurately valued at "free for credit", because it is easy to obtain them at that cost. His real beef should be with this fact, not the fact that people are asking him for photos at market prices.
We would all like to be able to charge money for things we would do anyway, but reality does not always oblige us. When my neighbor asked me for my grass clippings to add to his compost pile, I told him sure, but only if I could charge him $1000, based on the cost of my lawnmower, gas, and labor. After all, he will be able to use that compost as fertilizer eventually, and why should he profit from my hard work without compensating me? Sadly, my neighbor did not buy my argument, because grass clippings, like certain photos, are neither rare nor hard to come by.
[+] [-] feralchimp|14 years ago|reply
There is not a lot of money to be made anymore by taking competently focused, competently-exposed sunset pictures of the Eiffel Tower.
Great tools lower the barrier of entry for achieving technical competence in capturing an ever-widening variety of beautiful subjects. So for someone who expects to turn their ability to do that into a professional photography career, fine, "there is not a lot of money to be made in doing that."
But there is a shitload of money to be made taking pictures, even when a 100 megapixel camera and .96 lux 50mm prime lens can be had for the same price as a pack of cigarettes, because professional photographers tend not to get paid to walk around tourist destinations snapping pretty shit all year.
[+] [-] noonespecial|14 years ago|reply
In this way, I think this author's point of view is slightly more economically advantageous than the "this photo cost $6500" guy.
[+] [-] potatolicious|14 years ago|reply
You don't know any stock photogs?
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
Why can Github charge FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR for a local install of Github and succeed, impressively so, despite a small army of nerds pointing out how inexpensive it is to run one's own Git server and Gitorious? Why does 37signals have an office with walls made of 37signalsium (really, seen it, it's fuzzy) and trendy furniture despite selling software that the nerdosphere can clearly duplicate? Why does Yammer even consider publishing a $5/user/month price for software that is among every web geek's top-5-most-likely-personal projects?
Answer: they don't sell gypsum.
Cost based pricing, which works for gypsum sales but not so much for software, suggests that the price of a nice photo should be the price of the gas to get to and from the photo shoot, possibly divided by the number of people interested in buying the photo, plus maybe throw a couple bucks in there and buy yourself something nice, photographer.
Value-based pricing says, "how much it cost me to create the photo is irrelevant". YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES, say the nerds. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS SAYING! But value-based pricing continues: "no, what matters is how much it would cost you to make that photo and how much benefit it brings".
How much it would cost you to make that photo: (say) $6000, perhaps divided by the number of different photos you'd take given the same setup (but then also scaled back up to account for the headcount or professional services required to take lots of pictures).
How much benefit? It depends. I could take 10,000 words listing out factors in figuring it out. Most importantly: what are the substitutes to this photo and how much do they cost? For some businesses, clip art of the Eiffel Tower suffices to bring 80-90% of the value. For others (like ad-sales print publications), comparables might also be very expensive.
Now, the extent to which the YOUR business benefit from my photo exceeds MY cost to produce the photo is MY ADVANTAGE IN PRODUCING PHOTOS (the extent to which your cost exceeds my cost is my "comparative advantage"†††, and if it's a positive number possibly suggests that I'm the one who should be doing the photos in any case, since you have better ways to put your money to use). Having an advantage is a good thing. Among other things, it's a key reason why software startups are lucrative, and why we don't all work on line-of-business software for non-software companies.
It's probably true that a photo of a sunset isn't worth $6,000. But, exclusivity aside, the value of the photo also has nothing to do with how much it cost the photographer to take each shot at the margin, and it has nothing to do with the cost to make each marginal sale. What matters is how much it costs the customer to replace that value with a substitute, and in that analysis the $6000 set-up cost, while not determinative, is relevant perspective.
The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow. Situationally, the nerdosphere oscillates between extremes when trying to compute valuations for stuff with intangible-seeming benefits. Today, the nerdosphere apparently thinks either (a) every photo is a precious snowflake or (b) photo costs should be scaled by the current price of hard disk storage. Yesterday, it was whether it's right for Github to charge per repo. Before that, it's whether it's fair to have markets for spec work like 99designs.
None of that matters. What matters is, is there a market for what you're selling, and will it clear based on the model you use to price stuff on the market. Clearly there is a market for high-quality photography. Clearly it is not a cost-based market like gypsum, or there would not exist sites selling photos with royalties attached, or photos costing hundreds of dollars --- which clearly those sites do exist. So instead of arguing about how much photos should cost --- because, again, they cost what the market says they cost, not what you think it costs to make them yourself --- think instead about how this discussion applies to your own work product. More than you think it does, is my guess.
††† (Actually this isn't all what comparative advantage is; comparative advantage says, if there's a market for widgets and a market for photos and you're better at widgets than photos and I'm better at photos than widgets, then I should do widgets and you should do photos, which is a subtly different idea, but the point stands either way.)
[+] [-] bradleyland|14 years ago|reply
However! This statement struck me as out of place:
> The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow.
There is not 100% agreement on the moralism of copying digital goods. There is, agree or disagree, a lack of 100% acceptance of copyright as it stands today. This introduces an alternative that costs $0, which messes up the whole market equation. This moral conflict has to be resolved before you can arrive at a market price for digital goods.
[+] [-] dools|14 years ago|reply
Surely this is supposed to be the other way around. If I'm better at photos than widgets, and you're better at widgets than photos, then I should do the photos and you should do the widgets ... right? Crazy pills?
[+] [-] WalterBright|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prof_hobart|14 years ago|reply
Almost, but not quite. In the case of a hobbyist, yes it's irrelevant. But for a business, the cost to create should set the minimum cost they'd be prepared to charge (or at least be expecting to charge - you may find yourself discounting it below cost if you've already made it and fail to sell).
I do mostly agree though, and it always amuses me when I see people complaining about eBooks that cost more than dead tree ones. If it's not worth more to you, then don't buy it.
>The moralism in these threads is an irrelevant sideshow.
Again, not quite. Morality doesn't, or shouldn't, come into play when determining the price. But it does when it comes to how a "buyer" reacts to a price they don't like in relation to goods that have no marginal cost to produce a new copy - e.g. digital photo, movie download. If you don't like the price that's been set, but it's not going to cost the creator anything for you to simply take a copy for free, do you have any moral issue with that?
[+] [-] shkabazi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bfrs|14 years ago|reply
If I remember right, Jaron Lanier's "You are not a Gadget" [1] makes similar points.
[1] http://www.jaronlanier.com/gadgetwebresources.html
[+] [-] vectorpush|14 years ago|reply
Nobody has a license to use a photographer's photos without her permission.
Photos are an incredibly cheap commodity (that span the gamut of relative price and quality, like everything else)
It is not unreasonable that photo consumers expect low to no cost photographs.
I think we're all mostly in agreement here.
[+] [-] joshwa|14 years ago|reply
This is why microstock and craigslist haven't completely destroyed the market, since the professional can reliably create the RIGHT photo for the assignment (or in the case of stock, consistently predict and create the exact images the target market needs).
But it does exert downward pressure. The photo editor/art buyer is always cost-conscious, and whereas she used to only have the option of professional-quality-work at professional rates, now there is a huge pool of "good enough" photos at vastly lower cost. Buyers of photography, as it turns out, aren't actually that discriminating, so more and more frequently they're opting for the "good enough" photo instead of the RIGHT photo.
And this is where the professionals start to get irked. It'd be one thing if the new competition were undercutting them with similar-quality work at lower cost. It's be they're being undercut by work that is often objectively lower in value to the client, and they know the client would be better served.
It's actually quite analogous to the issue of outsourcing: a vast new pool of cheaper but lower-quality labor supply becomes available, and many firms move operations overseas. The end-product is crappier but cheaper. Nobody actually cares about quality, and given the choice, they'll go for cheaper and "good enough" over expensive and good.
Interestingly, Apple is somehow managing to upend this paradigm by producing really-good quality product at premium-but-not-ridiculous prices through design and manufacturing innovation and exceptional marketing, and is taking back market share from the mid-tiers. I can't think of how the photo industry as a whole can accomplish this, though, since it's B2B rather than B2C, and it's an army of independent professionals and not a unified association. (There's a legal limit on how much the industry can coordinate: the major photographers' trade organization was fined for price-fixing years ago becaused they had published pricing guidelines.)
(DISCLAIMER: I worked in the photo industry for years, and still shoot the occasional assignment)
[+] [-] timwiseman|14 years ago|reply
I agree with your overall point. But this one is more nuanced. In things that are of little significance, "good enough" is, well, good enough, and people won't pay more than they have to.
But you can charge a premium for even a tiny advantage, when that advantage matters to the people buying. The very best baseball players are paid very well, but those right below the very best get a small faction of that, and those right below them get the joy of playing and not much else.
Closer to home, I recently spent over $400 (and know people that have spent much, much more) on a Go set with a solid spruce board, kaya bowls, and onyx stones because I valued the aesthetics when I played, even though I could get a perfectly workable cardboard set for $20. But I am highly cost sensitive in just about every other area of my life.
[+] [-] davidw|14 years ago|reply
So ultimately, his money comes from Google advertisements, which are not free. He can afford to do photography as a hobby because he has income from another source, that can be traced back to a scarce good.
If all information goods were free, the power would shift to those who actually have something scarce to sell, which would likely mean fewer information goods of some kinds because some people at the margin could no longer afford to produce them if they were no longer able to generate an income by doing so.
[+] [-] ljf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|14 years ago|reply
If you just make it and keep it to yourself, just for your own personal fulfillment, sweet!
Or all put another way, if you like somebody else's art, but object to their charging something for it, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from learning the craft and producing it yourself...and you might get even more out of it then.
[+] [-] loup-vaillant|14 years ago|reply
Our economy is based on scarcity. Which means that anything abundant tend to see its price driven down to zero. Making a living by selling such goods as if they were scarce is increasingly difficult. Donations seems to work somewhat, though.
If everything (including food and housing) were abundant, we wouldn't even need money, and making a living out of music, photography, or software wouldn't even be discussed of. But we don't live in that world…
…Yet. The way things are evolving, more and more goods have the potential to be effectively abundant. Especially those who have bounded demand, like food (if I recall correctly, there is already more than enough food to feed the planet, if only it where correctly distributed). Work is being more and more automated, such that even human labour can eventually be made abundant (an especially vivid example is self-driving cars, which can bring down an entire profession). But scarcity isn't going anywhere, so we'd better prepare for a rather long transition.
I see several forms that transition could take. (i) More unemployment, more economic problems, more people starve and freeze despite the availability of food and housing. (ii) Reduction of the hours worked per week, while keeping the salaries up. (iii) Growth of actual wealth (Not of the GDP). (iv) artificial scarcity, driven by old corporation and institutions that just won't die.
I'd like to avoid (i) and (iv), but I'm afraid we already have evidence for them right now (especially (iv), see copyright and patents). I'd like to have (ii), but I'm not aware of any reliable metric about it. The last decades clearly demonstrate (iii), but I'm not sure we have as much as we could have.
Anyway, I'm not satisfied right now: abundance and scarcity clearly don't play well together. If someone has an idea about how we could make them, that could be terrific.
[+] [-] Samuel_Michon|14 years ago|reply
"I took the picture because I like taking pictures. I've invested into a lot of money into camera gear over the past 27 years or so and never made a dime from it. On the other hand, it has given me a lot of joy and pride. The joy to take beautiful pictures."
The author is an amateur photographer, he shares his work and people enjoy it. That's great.
There are also quite a few developers who contribute to open source projects. That doesn't mean that they or others can't ever charge for programming work or software products.
Some photographers license all of their work to the public domain, most professional photographers don't. I don't feel there's shame in that. People need to respect and adhere to the license a work is published in. The fact that you had to download a picture in your browser to view it doesn't mean you have the right to republish it.
[+] [-] ynd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jach|14 years ago|reply
This is a nice sentiment. It reminded me of a quote from Richard Feynman on his thoughts about the Nobel Prize:
"I've already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out. The kick in the discovery. The observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me." ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMaBmik4VYg )
[+] [-] orthecreedence|14 years ago|reply
If you want to create art to share with the rest of the world, great for you. Do so without strings attached and without expecting anything in return.
I see the purpose behind both posts, but they seem to be arguing over something that doesn't need to be argued over. Some people like to sell their software, some like to give it away. Neither is right, neither is wrong, the only context in which the actions can be judged are when they are done so through the artist...it is up to the artist to decide whether selling something or giving something away is right or wrong.
[+] [-] napoleoncomplex|14 years ago|reply
Yes, these fields might not be as lucrative as they once were, or rather, they're more competitive, but there is a large step between that and giving away things for free.
[+] [-] davidcollantes|14 years ago|reply
On the topic at hand, I fully agree with you.
[+] [-] ako|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] projectileboy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tommorris|14 years ago|reply
The code isn't the key part: the value is the fact that I can take complex and changing requirements and build them a one-off tool that does exactly what they want.
The code will be gone in five years, probably ten, as business needs will change.
[+] [-] skeptical|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjp9999|14 years ago|reply
We need to make a living, of course, but if you hold onto everything, it will die with you. Whereas in the public domain, your work becomes immortal.