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Comment by bobhankson | Hacker News Reader

I think we can all agree though, holy shit this guy has some amazing photos. If ever photos deserved a license, this is it!

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Another point of view: the more amazing they are, the more important it is that they are in the public domain, as it would be a valuable asset for the commons.

This is a fine point of view if the commons are willing to give him comfortable living accommodations, good food, relaxing holidays, camera equipment and trips around the world to take these photographs.

They could definitely do that. The government could choose to hire him as a nature photographer, give him a very nice salary and release the photographs into the public domain. Or we could pay him per work to do it.

But we don't do that. We don't want to pay taxes to let him fly around the world and photograph things for the good of the commons. If society is not willing to accommodate him, why would he be willing to sacrifice himself to accommodate society?

It's almost as if the commons has fallen victim to some kind of... what's the word? Grave misfortune?

I don't think you understood zeidrich's point in this case :) There's no tragedy of the commons for copyrights because the commons doesn't get reduced by usage. Tragedy of the commons as I understand it applies to things like air, which is free, but which people can deplete. (Externalizing pollution costs.)

Things like research can end up belonging to the commons but there's no tragedy of the commons argument about it. Instead your parent in this case I think was just pointing out that this is stuff that wouldn't exist at all if it weren't commmercially protected.

While you are technically correct that tragedy of the commons only applies to nonexcludable-rival public goods, your pedantry has helped nobody in this comment thread learn more. There's a time for it, and most pedants fail to see when it is actually important to correct definitions.

The tragedy of the commons is (among other things) a parable about market failure and inadequate property rights.

Are you sure? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons seems to disagree with you and talks in terms of depeleting a resource.

It can refer to both over consumption and under investment.

Not according to the article I linked, which even has a four-paragraph section called "metaphoric meaning" that does not extend to that meaning; nor do any of the examples in the long list of examples under the section "modern commons" show such a meaning.
The term "tragedy of the commons" simply refers to a different concept. It's just not what it means. It means common resources become less useful over time.

This is not a statement about investment; it's just that the effect that is described is quite specific. You don't have to use an incorrect term to describe what you're talking about.

Somewhat tragic, right?

> But we don't do that. We don't want to pay taxes to let him fly around the world and photograph things for the good of the commons.

I want that. Many people want that. And my tax dollars do do this already. Provincial and federal governments actively fund the development of news, education, and artistic media in many jurisdictions.

This is the US government's gallery http://digitalmedia.fws.gov for wildlife and fisheries.

I wonder if we could have some kind of system that both incentivizes him to create in the first place, by granting him a temporary monopoly on the commercial rights, and yet ensures that his work will eventually become part of the public domain?

It could center around the "right to copy". Hmmm, what could we call it?

You got downvoted to oblivion, but it's worth noting that "valuable for the commons" is actually a very strong reason for good copyright protection with a reasonable term. We want as many people as possible producing IP, and it's worth the short term cost of paying them to do it because the long term payoff is much richer.

This has, sadly, been subverted in many cases ... but it's still strong reasoning.

So you want to financially incentivize photographers to make low-quality, un-amazing photos?

You think the Law should be used to determine how to properly incentivize the commerce of photographs, at the cost of its peoples' freedom of expression?

Probably you do, and that's a fine perspective. I was just offering a different point of view for the sake of discussion.

Personally I think we'd be fine without that law, and anyone who wants high-quality amazing photos can pay to have them captured. Many of us would do so. But when the photo is distributed, without copyright law, people would be free to share it. That doesn't prevent someone from wanting (and paying for) the photo to exist in the first place. My appreciation for a photo is not detracted by another's simultaneous appreciation of it.

> That doesn't prevent someone from wanting (and paying for) the photo to exist in the first place. My appreciation for a photo is not detracted by another's simultaneous appreciation of it.

If you want to appreciate the photo, the photographer has a gallery on their site you can visit and freely view. The photos are definitely gorgeous. But we're not talking about appreciating the photos. We're talking about hosting the photo yourself or using it commercially.

Making these photos is very expensive. If someone pays so much for a photo, they'll surely want exclusive rights. Why would I pay tens of thousands of dollars for a photo I'd like to use commercially, and then share it with others for free? It's better to have the licensing be cheaper, and have lots of people be able to pay for the photo.

This is like saying "bands should give their music away for free, because the record label already paid to record it."

You're calling for a "patron" model of the arts, in which artists collect a one time payment (from one or more individuals) in order to create new artwork.

That's fairly inefficient in several aspects, and by "inefficient," I mean that it's not likely to lead to artists creating the works that people want to consume.

First, this reduces the artist to only producing works that a single entity (person, company), or a small group of entities, wants to commission. If a thousand people each want a picture of a wasp $10-worth, that's very different from two sponsors each paying $5,000 for that image, and everyone else paying zero.

Second, it makes it nearly impossible for an artist to create work "on spec" and then collect payment on it later. Again, the artist is taking a ton of risk since he/she is looking for a massive payment from one or two patrons, vs. small payments from many consumers. Also, how is a photographer to advertise his or her work online, if anyone can just copy the image to their hard drive?

Third, it restricts authors to only extracting value from their art at the time of creation. If a photo becomes wildly popular a year or two after it was created and sold the first time, then the author can't get paid for it.

Fourth, as a potential patron who is a rational actor, I have a strong incentive to comb the Internet for a free photo before I pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to commission a new one. Won't this stifle the funding for creation of new works of art?

Hence, patreon. I hope eventually everyone is on there and I can start contributing more materially to the artists I love than via exposure and the occasional thing they sell.

Yes? That being the whole intention of copyright law, which exists in every modern country in the world?

To be fair, nfoz seems to understand and accept that this is how copyright law works (in the U.S. at least; in many other countries copyright is treated as a natural right, akin to property).

He also states it's reasonable to agree with such law, which it undoubtedly is.

But I think he's being reasonable too, suggesting there could be alternatives. Like most of us here, I make my living out of copyright law. But I'm far from sure it the best way to deal with compensating creative, trivially reproducible work.

Fair enough.

For what it's worth: I'm not sure it's the "best" way, but I'm more sure that it's the optimal way in a market economy. Things should cost what they're worth to buyers, and coercion (which is what infringement is) should be taken out of that equation.

Copyright law is being used both for 'good' and for 'bad' purposes in roughly equal measures. Some creators make some money, plenty don't, quite a few non-creators manage to get their hands by hook or by crook (or even legal transfer) on some rights and seek rent on them for all those rights are worth or more if they can.

It sounds like he was describing more of a commission system - i.e. "hey, I'll give you $1000 to take this super-duper-awesome photo of this grasshopper that's sitting on my windowsill right now" or "hey, I'll give you $1000000 and cover transportation/lodging expenses if you agree to tag along with our entomological team and take photographs of this new species of dung beetle we discovered in Sudan".

>Personally I think we'd be fine without that law, and anyone who wants high-quality amazing photos can pay to have them captured.

You haven't a clue how much those photos cost if you had to pay the full price for their creation. Think a trip to a foreign country + plus some seriously expensive macro lenses, lights and a very good camera. Plus the photographer likely would want some salary as well.

That means those images are going to cost at least 10k, which is likely too much for e.g BugsBeGone to use one for their website. The price would of course come down if more people could share the images, from which the natural conclusion is to allow all people to share the image, provided they pay a fee for the right to do so.

>at the cost of its peoples' freedom of expression?

This is copyright, not patents. The existence of these photos doesn't in any way prevent you from taking whatever photos you want to take, nor limit how you can edit yours. Sure you can't take his photos, but you couldn't do that without copyright either because they wouldn't exist in the first place.

That means those images are going to cost at least 10k, which is likely too much for e.g BugsBeGone to use one for their website.

Then a bunch of people who want to use it for their websites pool their money, so that they can each pay a fraction of the 10k. You know, crowdfunding.

Appreciation isn't the problem. Exploitation is the problem. If use my work to make money without my permission and without falling inside a fair-use exception, then I have a big problem with that.

Lets assume that this fellow isn't rich beyond belief. I'm sure he's not.

Say he can take a really nice photo. To take this photo he has a number of expenses, he needs a certain amount of training, he needs to take a certain number of bad pictures before finding the good one.

Now right now he makes a living selling 1,00 copies of this photo to various organizations and publications.

Now say he can't do that. He can only sell it once. Two things happen. First is, to make the same amount of money, which is enough to cover his expenses and his failed photos, he needs to charge 100 times as much money. A $400 photo is now a $40,000 photo. The second things is, while before there were maybe 1,000 people willing to pay $400 for the photo, right now there might not be anyone willing to pay $40,000 for it.

There would especially be nobody willing to pay $40,000 for it when they know that as soon as someone else paid the $40,000 for it, they could get it for free.

In fact, even the people who had a budget to $400 for it before might not be so eager, because most of the photos they would get are now free. They just have to wait for someone else to get it first.

So this guy, who before was making an alright living taking photos, and a couple times a year getting a great photo that can sell a hundred copies, now has no means of supporting his photography.

Previously he could take photos that 100 people would be willing to pay $400 for and get by. These are very high quality photos. Maybe the majority nobody cares about. But if he can only sell them once, he can't afford it, and nobody can afford to buy it. Because of this he can't afford to take it, and the picture never exists.

Right now, de facto, anything that's released on the internet, licensed or not, is going to be there forever. Copyright's existence doesn't change that. For the commons this is a good thing. He can take legal action against people who are using his works without license, but he isn't targeting blogs and international sites and other places he can't reach.

Because of this scenario he is able to produce his works, and at the same time his work will be available across the globe. The only places targeted are companies who are trying to make money and think his work might be a free way to do this.

This isn't "So your blogger has been found using Alex's photographs" or "So your art project has been found using Alex's photographs". It's company.

If we are in some communist utopia where the companies using those photographs for free are also giving their goods away for free, then I don't think he would care.

But if an airline uses your photograph to advertise without credit and still charges you full fare to fly, and profits off them, why is that right? Shouldn't those profits go to the commons too?

"You think the Law should be used to determine how to properly incentivize the commerce of photographs, at the cost of its peoples' freedom of expression?"

I think this is a false question, as you never had the rights to the work of others in the first place.

The only way to attempt to invalidate nfoz's words there in the way that you want to results in begging the question.

I disagree that nfoz's suggestion is a good one. (See tptacek's followup to lultimouomo[1]). But it doesn't mean the question is invalid. (See lultimouomo's initial reply to tptacek[2]).

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9313558 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9313549

Serious, not-glib question: how do you propose that he make a living creating the pictures? Or do you propose that he not make a living creating the pictures, and they should instead by a hobby?

Then come up with a system to incentivize that. 'Your work is so awesome that you can't be allowed to exploit it commercially' is a ridiculous argument.

An expiry of copyright - after which a work enters the public domain - would accomplish this rather nicely without completely disincentivizing content creators.

Unfortunately, while this is already the case in theory in many jurisdictions, it's not the case in certain others, where the duration of copyright is effectively set to "current year minus first appearance of Mickey Mouse plus twenty years" thanks to the interests of a particular company whose name rhymes with a "D" and ends with an "isney". :)

This comment doesn't deserve those downvotes. You are right those pictures are much more important than those I take, but to follow that to its logical conclusion then we only get those amazing pictures in the public domain if the public is willing to pay a lot for them. In theory that could be done using e.g Patreon but in practice that probably has to be done using the, admitably broken, copyright system.

> You are right those pictures are much more important than those I take, but to follow that to its logical conclusion then we only get those amazing pictures in the public domain if the public is willing to pay a lot for them.

That conclusion does not follow. The pictures will become public domain if and when the copyright expires on them. Assuming that happens.

The historical way lots of content came into the public domain is death.

That's why plenty of artists - plenty of nature photographers among them - died relatively penniless.

http://europeansectionlgm.typepad.fr/photography_and_cinemat...

That's a friend of mine who died 3 years ago, he made the most amazing pictures. 50,000 of them in a archive in his home in Suprasl, and we can't even find the funds to properly digitize them so they will likely be lost sooner or later.

The historical way lots of content came into the public domain is death.

That's why plenty of artists [...] died relatively penniless.

can you expand on this? how does lifelong copyright cause artist poverty? i'm not signalling either dis- or agreement, but your claim needs to be substantiated.

So you paid his license fee for releasing them to the public domain? How much did that cost and how many pictures did you fund? And thanks!

If this comment was made about music it would have been up-voted.

So, the nicer your car is, the more people should just take it for a ride for free?

Commons or not, the guy still needs to make a living.

I understand the opposing argument as, "Yes the guy 'needs' to be able to make a living. Just like I 'need' a private jet. He needs to make a living, but NOT at the cost of bringing bits into existence that I am not allowed to copy!! That is supremely unfair. It's better if those bits don't exist at all. I just can't stand the existence of bits that in any sense 'belong' to someone, and it's better if he doesn't create them at all. If you create some bits, and I can view them, then I REQUIRE the right to copy them. THis is my inalienable freedom. If infringing on this freedom is what allows for the economic creation of amazing bits, then that system is flawed and those bits shouldn't end up getting created."

The above is honestly how people who are currently greyed-out in this thread seem to feel. (Though they don't say it as clearly.) It really is a supreme case of entitlement.

Edit: last sentence originally read supreme sense of entitlement; to be clear, the last sentence is my own personal judgment. I don't agree with these people, and I am fine with the existence of bits I am allowed to view but not to copy, i.e. that in a sense are owned by someone else who has an exclusionary right to them, that they can use to keep me from doing certain things without their permission.

I'll agree to the jist of your "opposing argument" above, except for the uncomfortable tone, and this derogation:

> It really is a supreme sense of entitlement.

That doesn't follow. Why do you attribute such disrespect to people who prefer a different economic/social organization for creative works?

I am a content producer. By trade, by hobby, by lifestyle. I license my works as CC0 as much as possible, and use copyleft for software so that those same works can't be held against me by the copyright system I'm trying to escape. I simply value my freedom of expression, including a philosophy of sharing works, and I also think it would lead to increased economic efficiency for the society.

It's a different perspective, I don't see a reason why you must call it "a supreme sense of entitlement" when I am one of the people creating these works that I want to be shared. It's just a different way for us to structure our resources and freedoms.

"That doesn't follow. Why do you attribute such disrespect to people who prefer a different economic/social organization for creative works?"

Because there are plenty of people out there who say exactly that. Granted, in general, they are not content producers themselves. People who believe that they are entitled to these things because they wouldn't pay for them anyway.

That doesn't seem too entitled to me. Extreme freedom of speech, no more.

By what right do you have to actively prevent (through threat of violence) someone from copying bits?

if you want to update your profile with an email (or email me) I can summarize my thoughts on society privately - it would just be noise in this thread.

By what right do you have to the works of others?

If I observe something, I should be able to make my own representation of it.

It seems that he is (or, used to be) making a living from a specific business model that only exists because it is upheld by copyright law. I am of the opinion that copyright law should be (slowly, responsibly) abolished. As long as people have a need for photographs, we will fund their development.

As long as people have a need for photographs, we will fund their development.

Fantastic! My email address is my profile. Please send me a list of your requirements with advance payment through Paypal - I'll eat the fees - as I am unable to locate any checks or money orders from you. I look forward to doing business with you!

The overwhelming majority of HN users make their living in another business model that only exists because of copyright law.

That would've been more true 10 years ago. Now, the overwhelming majority of HN users make their living in yet another business model that exists increasingly because of the relative obsolescence of the previous business model - namely, by shifting into the $foo-as-a-service realm.

The wages of all those people wiring up form fields to databases for cat sharing companies are propped up --- drastically propped up --- by scarcities engineered into the economy by copyright.

How do you figure? Nowadays, a very large majority of web devleopment primarily consists of taking some collection of open-source tools and other services in order to create a service. The entire justification for the existence of such a service is the idea that most people aren't inclined to do all this themselves.

This isn't a matter of scarcities at all (other than the time of the end user), let alone engineered/artificial ones. It's a matter of "I'm too lazy to setup my own web server to share my cat GIFs, so I'm gonna just use Imgur instead, since they've already done the hard part".

I agree. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Not really. You can't copy SAAS (assuming we disallow e.g hacking into servers, which seems fair in so far as you also can't read my diary, since it exist exclusively in my house). You can't copy a cloud system and you cannot meaningfully copy hardware.

I think you're making a logical error in applying the open-source software development model to the arts.

First, software packages are typically collaborative works of many people, improved over time. A photograph is created by a single photographer in an instant (excluding editing time for rhetorical purposes).

Second, photographers are not fungible resources, while software developers are, even controlling for skill level. The photos I take aren't the same as the ones you take, nor are those of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.

> I think you're making a logical error in applying the open-source software development model to the arts.

I am not. I have not said anything about software. I think all copyright should be abolished (slowly, responsibly). I have considered the ramifications for different types of arts. Relatedly, I think the areas to which we have (by convention) chosen that copyright should or should not apply in law is arbitrary and sometimes silly (e.g. copyright of fashion).

> Second, photographers are not fungible resources, while software developers are, even controlling for skill level.

Software developers are not fungible resources. Two authorings of software to the same requirements will be substantially different; same for photography.

After thinking about this more, I believe that some of the answer is whether the copyrighted material is art or craft. I would define art as a creation where the form is more important than the function, and conversely craft as something where the function is more important than the form.

Clearly, there's an analog scale between these two poles. But, take for a moment an http request library. Given a certain spec, multiple programmers (or teams of programmers) might take different approaches to meet that spec -- but the result is functionally the same, and if they faithfully follow the spec, they are all going to be more or less interchangeable.

I think a photograph is qualitatively different. If I were to ask a photographer to "take a picture of an ant", I could get radically different results that are not interchangeable.

I know I'm not going to convince you, so I'm not going to keep trying, but I think abolishing copyright would provide a dire challenge to people who create visual art for a living.

If you just say "http request library" you'll get as varied approaches as your ant picture. Try giving a ten page spec for the ant picture.

There exist creative ways to program, and there exist uncreative ways to photograph.

The typical photograph is more creative than the typical program, but you've mostly just shown the effect of specs.

>As long as people have a need for photographs, we will fund their development.

Please explain how.

One obvious way is taxation. It's the same way we fund expensive photographs of space, and high-quality journalism, and world-class educational materials... all of which contribute to the common good, like these insect photos.

There are many other ways. Is it hard to think them up yourself? Private foundations, crowdfunding, tangential services and showcases (he's already doing that), etc...

This isn't some novel idea, it's how a great amount of our works are produced today even though we also have copyright. Without copyright, we would lubricate different models for the knowledge economy. It's not like the world could only possibly be the exact way we do things now.

You're going to have to provide proof for that assertion. You're also going to have to provide proof that images of the same quality are going to be produced.

So go ask him how much it would cost for him to sell you the rights to the photos, so you can do just that.

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