Landscape, Nature And Travel Photography

A few weeks back I was hunting for music that I could use on a web based video and had a challenging time. As a photographer who cares about rights to my work being respected, I felt it was important to share that same respect to musicians whose work I wanted to use. Searching and gaining permission to use music for my photo video proved to be a huge challenge and got me to respect the Creative Commons initiative all the more.

While getting permission to use All Rights Reserved creative content is as simple as asking permission it can be frustrating. I’m normally a very patient person, but when I had my video ready to go and I found the music I wanted to use it seemed like an eternity to hear back from the artist. Eventually the artist wrote me back 48 hours later and gave me permission to use any of his work in the future regardless of current licensing designation. I was lucky and found a very cool artist to collaborate with.

Ultimately I burned a lot of time searching for music. It would seem that there is a huge opening for a site to be created matching artists who want to share their work in conjunction with other artists for promotional and non/pseudo-commercial purposes. To me having a directory that matches musicians and photographers to use each others work for mutual promotion seems like a win-win proposition. Until my dream of such a directory becomes a reality below are 5 copyleft resources to search for music and 5 royalty-free stock music resources.

An important note:
Music designated as “No Derivative Works license” cannot be used for photo videos as explained on this Creative Commons page Legal Music for Videos.
So even if you find music you like with this CC license you’ll still need to retain approval from the artist, so build in approval time as you plan your videos release.

“Under CC licenses, synching the music to images amounts to transforming the music, so you can’t legally use a song under a CC No Derivative Works license in your video.“

5 Copyleft Resources For Music

1. CC Mixter
2. Internet Archive
3. Jamendo
4. Proud Music
5. Film Music by Moby
   “‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
   If you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.”

5 Stock Music Resources (Pay to License)

1. StockMusic.net
2. Shockwave-Sound.com
3. Triple Scoop Music
4. MediaMusicNow.co.uk
5. MagnaTune.com

Technorati Tags: stock music, copyleft music, copyleft, royalty-free,   royalty free, music, photo video, photography

The 16th and 17th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released.

These episodes feature an interview with Jeff Sedlik, President and CEO of the PLUS Coalition (usePLUS.org), current Professor of Photography at the Art Center College of Design and also a past president of the Advertising Photographers of America (APA).

Discussed is the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS). Although relatively young by comparison to other photographic standards bodies, PLUS is tackling tough contemporary issues facing photographers. Both episodes are packed with valuable information every photographers should be aware of.

Part I of the interview covers PLUS Standards including the PLUS Glossary, License Generator, PLUS – IDs and the differentiators between PLUS, IPTC, and Creative Commons.

Part II of the interview covers machine readability, pending Orphan Works Copyright legislation, metadata, the PLUS Artist & Licensor Registry and the future of PLUS .

Download the latest episodes:
EXIF and Beyond: Jeff Sedlik Interview Part I and II

For the non-iTune listeners a streaming version of this podcast can be accessed here.

Technorati Tags: EXIF and Beyond, podcast, interview, Jeff Sedlik, PLUS, Picture Licensing Universal System, PLUS Coalition, IPTC, Creative Commons, usePLUS, standards, Orphans Work

In the May/June edition of Digital Photo Pro I have an article featured on Creative Commons that was spawned from my EXIF and Beyond podcast interview with Professor Lawrence Lessig. Look for it at your local book store. In the mean time the online version of this article has just been released and I invite you to take a look.

Creative Commons – Digital Photo Pro

Technorati Tags: Creative Commons, Lessig, Digital Photo Pro, article, Jim Goldstein, Jim M. Goldstein, EXIF and Beyond, podcast

As you may know I’m not a big proponent of using Creative Commons licensing for my photographic work (see Creative Commons: A Great Concept, I’ll Never Employ), but I do recognize it has value in some contexts (see EXIF and Beyond: Lawrence Lessig Interview). A recent development caught my eye that highlights one of the weaknesses of the Creative Commons model. That weakness is that the system of Creative Commons licensing is only as good or reliable as those that use it properly. If those using Creative Commons licensed images that don’t follow the license, the honors based system breaks down and becomes useless if not a detriment to the photographer releasing their work under it.

The latest story exemplifying this weakness comes from Corey Doctorow improperly using Creative Commons licensed photographs by Aaron Landry on the Boing Boing web site. To date Corey Doctorow has been a staunch advocate of Creative Commons and has written on the subject several times, often being referenced on the Creative Commons blog. If one of Creative Commons most staunch supporters doesn’t use it properly then what is the likelihood the average person will?

An Example of Creative Commons Not Working – Aaron Landry

Of course the next question raised based on Aaron’s licensing terms is Boing Boing a commercial site? Is the placement of advertising on the site enough to warrant identifying it as a commercial site and thus making commercial use of his photography? Joshua Benton shares an interesting experience in trying to determine the Creative Commons perspective to a similar question he raised sometime ago. Unfortunately Creative Commons clarifies little on what is considered “Commercial Purposes”.  This exposes yet another weakness of Creative Commons… an organization working to better define and protect image use, but still stuck in limbo on making the call or just unwilling to make the call on certain definitions. How is this an improvement over the ambiguity of copyright use and legal definition we see in our legal system?

Technorati Tags: Creative Commons, Aaron Landry, Boing Boing, photo, photography, licensing

Thanks to Pods In Print a transcript of my EXIF and Beyond podcast interview with Lawrence Lessig is now available and can be read below. I’ve received some great feedback regarding the interview, but I am also aware that listening to the discussion can be challenging due to volume variations, length of the discussion and complexity of the discussion topics.  My hope is that the transcript will bring this important discussion on copyrights and Creative Commons to a new audience and make it easier to reference key points for future discussions on this topic.

Thank again to Pods In Print and their selecting this podcast as their Pods In Print Editor’s Pick.

— begin of transcript —

Jim Goldstein
Hello.  I’m Jim Goldstein and welcome to EXIF and Beyond, a podcast dedicated to the forethought, afterthought and everything in between regarding photography.

As photography sharing services such as Flickr expand, popularity of blogging grows, social-networking sites and user-generated content such as YouTube videos become more deeply intertwined in our Internet culture, many photographers are finding themselves at the crossroads of shifting expectations by viewers and publishers alike in regard to online imagery.  As these expectations shift, copyright disputes are surfacing at a greater frequency and new licensing tools such as Creative Commons are becoming more widely adopted. Read more…

Join me at the Media Web Meet Up III: The Producers where I’ll be a panelist with fellow photographer Lane Hartwell, legal expert Jason Schultz from the Electronic FrontierFoundation (EFF) and announced last night Heather Champ from Flickr.

Event Details

Subject: The Producers – people creating content for the Media Web

Speakers:

Lane Hartwell, Photographer – http://fetching.net
Jason Schultz, Lawyer, EFF – http://eff.org
Jim Goldstein, Photographer – http://www.jmg-galleries.com
Heather Champ, Flickr – http://www.flickr.com

Probably the biggest stakeholders in the Media Web space are those who are producing the creative content that everyone is benefiting from. They are also the ones dealing with the pains that are multiple formats, incompatible platforms and closed protocols as well as the grey areas around copyright.

This month’s Media Web Meetup is a discussion led by The Producers themselves to talk about these important issues. Without artists, we wouldn’t have a media web at all…

++++++++++++++

Location:

Neue Songbird Nest

585 Howard Street between 1st and 2nd
San Francisco, California 94107

(Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps)

These meet-ups are intended to get people interested and working in the media web together to discuss what it means to be open. Those working on open protocols, methods and formats on the web are very welcome, too!

Homepage

http://www.openmediaweb.org

Media Web Meet-Up III: The Producers

More on this event:

Fresh from the controversy… – SF Weekly

Technorati Tags: Media Web, Meet-up, Lane Hartwell, Jim Goldstein, photography, EFF, Jason Schultz

Yesterday Dave Winer announced the release of FlickerFan. FlickrFan (see FlickrFan.org for product details) enables Flickr users with a MacMini connected to their TV to display photography from their Flickr Contacts. This automatic feed is actually very cool and the type of use is a really nice way of displaying some great photography in a larger format. Robert Scoble ran a quick demo and fielded questions about FlickrFan yesterday evening see the two parts of this demo on Robert’s Qik page.

There is one catch that concerns me though… Read more…

Over the past week a catchy video has been circulating the web titled “Here Comes Another Bubble” (Note: this link is dead as of 12/11/07). The video has music created by the Richter Scales sung to Billy Joel’s “We didn’t start the fire”. The video itself is comprised solely of photos of a variety of technology icons who have started Web 2.0 companies that many think are way over priced in valuation. Its been the talk of the town, being linked from a variety of tech blogs big and small including the likes of “All Things Digital” (twice even)

The sharp humor, catchy twist of the well known song lyrics and timeliness of the “bubble” discussion made for a very entertaining video. The last I saw the video had over 300,000 views on YouTube. The only problem is none of the images were cited; credit wasn’t given to any of the photographers and few were asked permission to have their work used in this format including a friend of mine Lane Hartwell. Ironically credit was given to those that put the video together, all that contributed music including Billy Joel and of course the Richter Scales.

The justification for the lack of credit by the Richter Scales on their blog is that it was “impractical” given the number of sources and that the parody was protected under Fair Use. As a refresher I had discussed Fair Use in a previous post titled “The Wars Surrounding Photographers and Other Creatives” back in September. Fair Use is an area of law that is continuously being defined in the courts particularly in relation to the web and there are quite a few cases that have set precedent. As it stands there are “four factors considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair” (see definition of Fair Use at the U.S. Copyright Office web site).

In this case it would seem the Richter scales are trying to circumvent the determination of “whether such use is of commercial nature” by creating a free video and giving away MP3’s of the file. What is difficult to escape is that if you look at their home page the video is being used to promote sales of previously produced CDs/songs and upcoming concerts. So the question arises “Is Web 2.0 marketing via the distribution of a video on YouTube considered commercial use?” In my non-lawyer opinion it would seem so. The video itself had a URL to take people back to their web site. Clearly this is promotion and commercially oriented. The next question is “Does parody trump the consideration over the determination of whether the use is commercial in nature?” That is the $64,000 question.

All the legal mumbo-jumbo aside what is the big deal? I’ve talked about Creative Commons: A Great Concept, I’ll Never Employ and referenced previous talks by Lawrence Lessig who speaks of the the law strangling creativity but when you get down to the core of the issues its about getting permission if you use someone else’s work. No matter what side of the fence you are on for this or any other similar case I can’t imagine that getting permission is that difficult. If someone has a Creative Commons license giving someone blanket permission to use an image or if an image was designated “All Rights Reserved” it’s really not that hard to track someone down in this day and age to ask permission… parody or not.

In many regards I feel for both parties involved. In my blunt opinion the Richter Scales pursued this in a dumb fashion and took a gamble by not citing everyones work. The Richter Scales would be plenty pissed if their work was being used with out citation and/or was being used with out permission. In regard to the photographers, including my friend Lane, whose work was used but not cited the images should have been more heavily watermarked or on a site with greater protection (assuming it was taken off of Flickr). As noted in my latest podcast, Ken Light makes a great point that the only sure way to protect your photography is to not have it out in the world and that includes the web. We all know that isn’t necessarily the best business decision as the web is a key marketing tool. As pointed out in the example of Ken Light’s John Kerry photo the best way to protect your images is to file your copyrights with the Library of Congress (see Copyrights: Protecting My Photography). I’m curious to see how the claim of Fair Use is interpreted in this case and whether photographers should start to fear satirists who feel they don’t need to credit the property of photographers or for that matter anyone who looks to claim a defense of “Fair Use” to bypass copyright protection.

Technorati Tags: fair use, copyright, Richter Scales, Lane Hartwell, Ken Light, Here Comes Another Bubble, video, photography, All Things Digital, YouTube