The Online Rant

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine the other day. My friend is an amature photographer. And he is quite good. He was showing me some of his pictures, and I asked him if he had posted them anywhere on the Internet. His response was that he had a few low resolution images posted on his webpage, but nothing with a high resolution. Plus he only had a few of his large collection posted there.

Now my friend isn’t into the latest Internet trends. He is computer literate, but a lot of Internet culture and services just pass him by. So I started telling him about Flickr and the ease with which he could post his pictures on the site. I described the community benefits of the site, and I stressed the offloading of bandwidth and hosting costs for large pictures. My assumption being that bandwidth and hosting space were the reason why he hadn’t posted very many pictures on his site.

His response was not at all what I had expected. Though maybe I should have. Now that I think about it, I think his response may be typical of how most people not in the computer industry and coming from his background would respond.

What he said was, “If I post my pictures on Flickr, it would make it easier for people steal them.” He then went on to explain that his photos were quite valuable. In fact, he had already managed to sell a few of them to the local newspaper. His worry was that by posting his images on the internet for anyone to access, he would be reducing their value because they would be easier to “steal”.

I didn’t try to convince him otherwise, but I do think he is wrong. He thinks the Internet would reduce the value of his photos. The truth is that at worst would have no affect on the value, and at best it would increase the value.

Right now his photos only exist on his local computer. He knows about them, and knows what they contain. No one else, other than a few local reporters, knows they exist. From the perspective of most of the world, his photos and his expertise as a photographer do not exist at all. Because they can’t find him and have no way of knowing he or his photos exist.

If he posted the photos on Flickr, or any one of the many other photo sharing sites, people could find them. They would be categorized, indexed, and searchable by the whole world. The pool of potential buyers for his photos would become huge and nearly unlimited. His photography skills would be displayed and advertised to the world. Which would make his photos, and his skills more valuable than they ever could be with him pitching them only to local reporters and newspapers. And it wouldn’t cost him anything.

Will people “steal” his photos? Of course they will. But would the people who “steal” his photos have ever bought them in the first place? I really doubt it. If they aren’t the kind of people who would honor his copyright terms in the first place, then they are unlikely to to be willing to buy his photos.

So if they take his photos off of Flickr and use them without paying him, he isn’t really any worse off than he would be if they hadn’t taken them. In fact, he might even be better off because more people will see the images. And reputable publications will attempt to track down the owner before using the images. So the “stolen” photos actually become a form of advertising for his portfolio and his skillset.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think he should ignore violations of his copyright. After all, if you don’t attempt to enforce your copyright there is no incentive for anyone to ever honor it. The point I’m trying to get across, is that you shouldn’t let concerns about potential copyright violations drive what you do with the images you own. Because the benefits of sharing the images, far outweigh the protections you get from hoarding the images.

By the way, the images I use on this blog come from morguefile. A great site for free images and amature photgraphers.