Have You Been Photonapped?

Posted by Joshua S. Hill

January 30, 2008

This article will be published on the 30th of January, 2008, at Daily Galaxy.com. I am the author of both however, and thus no copyright or reprint issues exist. It also explains the duplication of information in this post, and the following (preceding?) post.

In a day and age where the internet has provided ease of access to everything, the big topic on everyone’s lips is that of ownership. Who owns what you write, what you take a photo of, what you listen too, what you watch?

The prominent battle field that this is being fought upon is owned by the music and movie industry. The big studios are scared to the bones of any and every single piece of media being let go without some sort of restriction. Some of these restrictions are simple methods to track who originally bought the track. But in most cases they are an attempt to limit how many times you can play, where you can play, what you can play it on, and how long you can play it for.

However there is a different battlefield, smaller, yet no less significant, that has cropped up as a result of sites like Flickr, MySpace and Facebook.

You might at first think that the three don’t have anything communally in common; but each allows their users to upload photos for the world to see. It is a fantastic way for everyone to communicate their lives in whichever way they see fit. More than that, it helps people stay in touch.

But there are companies – not surprisingly – who are ready and willing to abuse this system. In fact these companies are often the same ones that fight tooth and nail for restrictions on their own material. But in doing so they are more than happy to abuse the rights of those of us who place our photos on the internet.

Tom Regan, a columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, used the example of a 15 year old girl from Dallas, America. A photo of her at a youth car wash had been innocently placed on the internet so that her friends could share in what was no doubt a good time. However some time later a friend passed along proof that her photo had been used in an Australian mobile phone advertisement. It was the first she had heard of this.

Another article, this time in the Washington Post, showcased what happened to one Niall Kennedy. He had gone to a technology convention, and taken some shots, which would later be posted on the internet. A Microsoft-run blog later linked to that photo, but failed to give credit. Kennedy got his own back by swapping the photo for that of a man mooning the camera, only then was an apology finally acquired (the post was taken down in under 15 minutes; funny that).

In both of these examples big companies – Virgin Mobile (in Australia) and Microsoft – decided that they were above the law; and make no mistake, this is breaking the law. These photos were licensed under the Creative Commons license which, in short, allows for a certain amount of flexibility in the use of photos as long as credit is given to the owner.

The world is looking for genuine, and the big companies go for that authenticity by using images taken by your average Joe or Jo.

This brings in to play a new term that is beginning to float around; The Culture of Ownership.

Molly Wood, from Cnet.com and their insanely popular podcast Buzz Out Loud coined the phrase – or, more to the point possibly coined the phrase but undoubtedly brought it to the public’s attention.

According to the Urban Dictionary, it is described as

The general feel in todays society that everything is somehow copyrighted or property of someone else to the point where it hinders creativity and makes it much more difficult to innovate. It is also the belief that just because you created/thought of something that you should have complete and total control over every aspect of that thing, object or idea.

Where the 15 year old girl from Dallas and Niall Kennedy had obvious rights to their work – photographs that they had taken, and thus belonged to them under centuries old copyright law – there is, as described, a feeling that one’s ownership of something must extend beyond the grave, and with a grip as tight as deaths, over everything.

Creative Commons was created so that there could be another viable and, more importantly, visible option. This way people are now able to specify that, ‘yes, my photo may be used by someone else, but only if I am credited.’ This allows for the creativity that many mediums are suffering from a lack of – the music industry for example – while still maintaining the necessary links to the original owner.

My focus in this piece is just to alert those of us who use sites like Flickr and Facebook for posting photos to be aware of our rights online. That our work could end up in a multi-million dollar advertising promotion is unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility. But as I strayed a little in to the culture of ownership, so you may also like to stray. For more information, head along to CultureofOwnership.org.

Make sure to check out my photos on Flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons license Attribution-No Derivative.

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