FlickR and the creative commons.

This blog is in response to a Dan Slee blog of a couple of weeks ago. For those who don't know him, Dan is a much respected Local Gov figure and his blogs are always worth a read. He has earned this respect by me and a lot of other people across the country for his knowledge and understanding of Local Gov, content strategies and Social Media. In his blog he listed 20 things he learnt at the recent UKGovCamp and such is the power of the man, many other people have followed his lead and done their list of twenty things as well. In Dan's list I agree with 19 of the things. However there is one thing I do disagree with. Dan stated that he wished for a council to put all their photographs on Flickr under its Creative Commons licence. Sorry mate but I don't agree with that.

Correction, I cannot find the original blog post where Dan made his comment… I'm not even sure that it was Dan that said that now, apologies if it wasn't you Dan. If anyone can find the original source then please let me know. Anyway as the bolg is already written and with less than 30mins till #weeklyblogpost's have to be in, here's the blog anyway.

Two thing are in issue here, FlickR and the creative commons licence. I've never been a fan of the FlickR website. I really don't like that way they organise and display their photos. Their groups system means the name of the photographer gets lost along the line. If I see a nice photograph I want to know who took it so I can look out for more of their work. I've got a few photographs on their myself from my days when I helped out at the Bournemouth Aviation Museum, but for my general photography I am in the process of writing my own photo gallery to host my photos in the way I want.

I won't be releasing any of my photos under a creative commons licence for all and everybody to use. I have had requests in the past for permission to use my photographs on websites and magazines and I have been more than happy to grant this permission. But I've still retained control over my photographs. It has taken my time and money to produce those photographs why should I be expected to just give them away.

It the same with photographs taken by Councils to which Dan is referring to. Someone at that council has obviously taken a great deal of time and public money to produced a set of photographs. Time and money spent going out to get take the photographs and all the editing and so forth done back in the office. This is something that most councils won't do. In these times of cuts, corporate photos libraries are an extravagance that many are not willing to invest in. To my mind it would be very hard to create a business case that could justify the huge outlay for little reward that a corporate photo library created by a council would involve, Unless of course the council tries to sell those photographs, to try to recoup some of the huge costs. But of course they will then be competing with the professional photography market.

My local newspaper, and I'm sure other around the country, has made a big thing about its collection of photograph. You have been able to have copies of Echo photographs for many years. Indeed many years ago when my brothers appeared in photographs in the newspaper my mum went down to their offices and ordered copies of those photographs. Buying of photographs was never hugely publicised, not like it is these days. Newspapers are now in the situation where people expect their websites to cover the news stories. Take the example when certain national papers introduced a fee for anyone reading their articles online. The decision came under some negative comments from users expecting everything for free.

Anyway, back to the Echo. Having their articles on the website must mean that their sales of the printed paper is going down and so it seems that they are pushing there photography side much more than they used to. They are also producing more books, based on their huge back catalogue of photos. A catalogue that they would not have had if they released photographs on creative commons licensing years ago. Whilst I don't know if the photographs have saved the paper, I‘m sure it is helping.

My views on copyright theft has hardened since I've been talking to my sister-in-law, who is a published author and have been planning my own detective series based in Bournemouth. I aim to spend a long time planning and writing these books and I am not going to give them away. I've even heard comments from people about the price of e-books, kindle books etc But there is no printing and shipping costs, so why aren't they next to nothing to buy? Well the author still spend many hours writing it, paying an editor to edit it. Agency costs etc. You can't expect them to give it away after that.

I digress, back to photographs. Ian Hislop made what I consider a very important statement to the Leeveson inquiry into Journalism. I can't remember the exact words so this isn't a direct quote. But he said something like 'We live in a society now that expects everything for free, that's why we have no film industry to speak of and a bad music industry'. Would flooding the market with free photographs help the professional photography business?

I'm reminded of an article I once read about the flower markets in the Netherlands. Growers selling their flowers for export all over Europe. I see Dutch registered Lorries nearly every day in Bournemouth, supplying the local florists. In the article the reporter asks about what happened to all the flowers that don't get sold. Surely they get donated to a local Hospital or the like. Certainly not was the reply, they just get destroyed, sounds harsh but that's business. If people knew that flowers were being delivered each day to the hospital for free, no-one would buy flowers for their sick friend and relatives in that hospital. If they gave them away it would instantly kill their own business and put them out of wok. Which would end up meaning that nobody would have flowers.