I'm Esten...

Forget copyright

July 5, 1 p.m. | OpenWeb

 

Copyright is bringing me down. Last week, I made the decision to take all the photos in my Flickr stream and set them to a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike license. Now, why would I do that when every photo class I have ever been enrolled in involves at least one point where the professor tells you to protect your rights through full copyright?

 

Because copyright is killing our culture. Because I want the next generation of photographers to have inspiration and hope. And, most importantly, because I don’t want to be a hypocrite.

 

Copyright was never intended to be used the way big content companies are using it today. To use a quote from Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture (a wonderful book that I hope anyone reading this post will take the time to read):

 

“If ‘piracy’ means using the creative property of others without their permission – if ‘if value, then right’ is true – then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy”

 

The Disney corporation forgets that Steamboat Willie is based on the vaudeville Steamboat Bill Jr., and is more of a remixing of that work than an original work on its own. The recording industry forgets its special terms it has for music licenses on radio amount to piracy. Photographers should realize that in most cases, the improper use of their photos that I’ve seen some people get so upset about, fall in about the same lines.

 

Here’s a story that happened to me and helped me realize the pointlessness of intense copyright enforcement. Imagine someone’s personal blog uses a photo you took to illustrate a story they wrote. That is your photograph out of the context of its original meaning. You get upset, and start writing a cease and desist. Before you send it, you realize two things. One: there is no commercial gain this person is getting from publishing your photo. This is not Gizmodo, it’s not the New York Times. Two: by sending this C&D, the only thing you’re effectively doing is stopping distribution of the photo, putting this person at a disadvantage without gaining anything yourself.

 

So, by sending this letter, you’re preventing people from seeing a creative work that you made without any actual benefit. How does this make sense? Sending this type of C&D is the most damaging and ridiculous thing you could possibly do. You get zero exposure, zero money and zero longevity just because you don’t think the person is worthy to use your photography.

 

Now, imagine an emerging artist wants to use your photo in a collage or mashup for their personal site. They don’t plan on selling the work, just using it to further their own experience as an artist. Most photographers I know, when they see their photo being used in this type of context without their permission, would send a C&D (or at least complain about it on Twitter). Meanwhile, a Girl Talk album sits on their iPod and they don’t even give it a second thought. This is the exact same thing. For everyone crying out “wait, Girl Talk’s 30 second samples are fair use and your situation isn’t”, I’d like to point out that fair use, as a concept, is so murky that even the US Copyright Office says that:

 

“The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission.” (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html)

 

So, it’s up to us to define exactly what fair use is. It’s our responsibility to make sure that someone can use one of our photos as desktop wallpaper without us pretending we’re lawyers and sending angry emails. It’s our right to get paid, yes, but it’s our responsibility to make sure that the people we’re asking for money from actually, you know, have it.

 

Let’s be sensible about copyright and not let the dissemination of our works be stopped because someone’s afraid of a lawyer. Let’s realize that when we post our favorite photo from James Nachtwey on our blog, we’re just as guilty as the people we send C&Ds to.

 

Go and put a Creative Commons license on your works. It’s easy. Go to this website and pick the license that is the most appropriate for you. Get your name out there, let people see your work. And when a company wants to use it, get paid. If you don’t get paid, that’s when you send the C&D. But let other artists like you have a little bit of leeway.

 

 

Post-script: Free Culture can be freely downloaded here. It’s an incredible book that shows exactly how dangerous the permission-based culture we’re turning into is.

 

Edit: I'd like to add another anecdote I just remembered. One of my sister's friends was playing a show at a coffeehouse in town. She's sort of a singer-songwriter kind of person. Halfway through playing a cover of a Lady Gaga song, someone working at the coffeehouse came up and told her to stop because it was a copyrighted work. Do we want this type of locked-down creativity to define our culture?