Wednesday 23 October 2013

Releasing my images under Creative Commons?


For years I've been publishing my images online with the copyright statement of "All rights reserved".  When asked I've allowed people to use my images on a non commercial basis. From time to time people have used them without asking and I've had to try to get them to take them down or pay for the use or grant them belated permission depending on the circumstances.

I've been thinking of releasing my images under a Creative Commons license, specifically "Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported" which when translated means that my images may be used non commercially providing they are attributed to me and are unchanged (no derivative works). They cannot be used commercially without making an arrangement direct with me.

I'm about 80% certain on this and I called for opinions on g+. The majority were supportive, one personal +Michael Tucker even pointed out that the Australian CC was developed locally with Queensland University.

This might be the next step in my journey as a photographer and might free me from worrying about people taking my images and using them without permission  because they will implicitly already have permission.

The one thing that holds me back is that I cannot put caveats on the use of the images, for example I would not want them used politically, for religious purposes or in promotion of poor society causes.

Update

I decided to release under CC some time ago and it's a bit of a stress reliever to be honest. All the little image thieves who use the image for their own purposes I can ignore because they're allowed to use them now. It's the commercial ones I can attack :). Read the blog where I talk about it.

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