22 December 2007
Why Photographers Hate Creative Commons
Posted by Mikhail Esteves under: General .
Last week, Creative Commons turned five years old — five years of phenomenal growth, thanks in no small part to advocates like the photo-sharing site Flickr.
Now, I don’t want to piss on CC’s birthday cake just for the fun of it. But it does seem clear that an increasing number of photographers — not just professionals but high-end hobbyists also — have become disenchanted with the Creative Commons system.
Why? Depending on who you ask, it’s because:
1. It’s taking money out of the pockets of working photographers;
2. It’s putting money into the coffers of large corporations, whose executives like CC-enabled crowdsourcing even better than Third World child labor;
3. It’s supposed to make sharing your work easier, but it often just makes it more confusing — creating the kind of misunderstandings that lead to lawsuits.