Simple, moral, legal and so easy to apply. Why is it so difficult for people to understand?

Anyway shameless Pilfered mag is now backtracking in face of the outrage from the photo community. From their updated homepage: “we are officially re-imagining our perspective”.

Good riddance.

Bad enough that those commissioning art try to pay less and less, not a living wage even before trying to buy and maintain the equipment needed to create it. But to be told the work is worth being shown to prop up the website creators ego but the actual creators of the works are not important enough to be asked first nor have their copyright respected – they should feel honored to have their work stolen? This from supposed creative professionals?

And, what about the subjects of the photographs? Do they also have no rights simply because you “want it”? They gave model releases to the creating photographers to use their images. They knew they should be able to assume by law that the images were in the creative control of the photographer in whom they placed their trust. They didn’t give permisson for some supposed Robin Hood to steal their likenesses to promote an agenda based on selfishness.

Straight up, without advance permission it is stealing. Ask first and give the payment and/or credit required or don’t use it, period. If you can’t figure out who to ask, don’t use it. Just as with the idea of borrowing your car or money from your wallet, if permission wasn’t asked and given in advance, it’s stealing. Your can try to spin it with whatever BSspeak you want but your words convince no one but yourself. I’m sure the car thief has a great line of justification as well. He or she is only expressing themselves through the art of carjacking after all.

The creators of that site are sociopaths with no moral conscience.

In the context of photography, rather than art, this is a life and death struggle. Pilfered is only a small incursion, it seems particularly egregious that senior, well-known photographers don’t think they have a duty of care toward less established colleagues. I’m not referring to the creative intention, but what sort of example is it that use without asking or attribution is OK?

I think you’re mistaken about fair use legality. Any photo yearbook or anthology could make the same claim to education exceptions. The new digital provisions are undermined by a redistributable PDF and removal of creators’ metadata. I still haven’t seen any defence of use without asking or attribution, possibly because it’s indefensible, probably because nobody cares.

Clearly I haven’t struck any resonances with anyone’s conscience. I’ll shut up now.

Your argument is “USE WITHOUT ASKING, USE WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION” and then you continue your battle by insulting people that support the mag.

This mag actually does abide by fair use doctrine under US Copyright Law – read carefully and you will see that too, there are new amendments with regards to digital transmissions. Clearly, there is no ill will behind the mag – stop demonizing it.

On a side note, I gotta say, you are quite the writer – you should use your powers for good.

Look, there’s a simple moral point here. So far nobody has even attempted to answer it.

You’re right about that. This particular revolution is one of seduction, of those who confuse ‘free’ with freedom. All that’s happening here is a concentration of wealth and power and viewpoint into the hands of a new generation of aggregators and distributors, Google, Yahoo, Getty and a thousand others who feed off creators. They are replacing the older forms, the publishers, film and music companies, whose monopoly misuse of copyright the exploited public are only too happy to repay with theft.

In the new model, creators’ copyright is an inconvenience, an inhibition to aggregation from which value can be realised. The new ecology is dog-steal-from-dog, beneath the veneer of sharing as a cultural right.

Don’t get me wrong. I utterly support and celebrate sharing and the democratisation of access and expression that Web 2.0 faciilitates, the same as you. But I see the collateral damage too. Some media are able to adapt as old business models have been destroyed, eg musicians have managed to escape their reliance on CD sales and now support their work through self-publishing, merchandising and live performance. ‘Real artists’ major value was always in originals anyhow. But photography is an disaster area because it’s primary asset always was its reproduceability. Those who control that own any value, and that’s no longer the people who make the work, but those who distribute it. Even microstock is in trouble now, increasingly eclipsed by free. ‘Free and good enough’ is completely superseding good by the standards of the medium itself.

Pilfered’s target audience and contributors are, for sure, believers in this seduction. The promise of recognition here is dangled commercial opportunity, exposure to AD’s and buyers; that alone allegedly differentiates it from any other rights-abusing publisher. But one can, after all, look at pictures around the web without it, and if sharing inspiration was the intent a list of bookmarks would do the job ethically.

One may as well play the lottery as chase this myth. Photography as a profession is being murdered by photographers clambering over each other and themselves, anxious for a byline that says ‘you’re good’, as deluded as sub-prime bankers who thought their models worked. Yes, there is still a high end, but crowded with more and more people chasing less and and less work. Even Liebowitz is in the hole.

So in Photography 2.0 the whole ecology has been wrecked. It’s no longer possible for people to build careers and sustain themselves whilst they hone their vision and craft and minds. Famous for 1/60th sec is a good as it gets, and onscreen long enough for some ad exec to pillage the idea and build himself a reputation.

If people want to go along with this, fine, it’s their choice, as it has been all along. But that makes it even more important to bloody well ask them, and to credit their work if they agree.