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