ASMP has a post on its SB2 blog that says, essentially, that Creative Commons licenses may be a good model for photography licensing going forward. I cannot tell you how appalled I am by that. But I can understand that attitude because if there is one thing the CC folks are good at, it is selling their snake oil. They can spin reality to make it seem like one is doing something fantastically morally decent and important when really the CC massive corporate backers are just using and capitalizing on every item given to the “commons” to expand their own businesses.
The clearest analytical error that is being made is blurring the B2C appeal of Creative Commons licensing (and “free”-based business models in general) and the B2B world. CC has been incredibly effective at selling “free” to the masses, because, well, who doesn’t like getting something for free? So, they spin the idea that if you give away something, you will build a following and that will result in more business for you. Well, yes, that may work with consumers (and even then I’m not convinced, see Malcolm Gladwell’s excoriation of C. Anderson’s book Free) but it does not work with businesses as your targets.
Think about it, you do not see any business releasing its fundamental IP-based product via CC or any “free” system. No, Google doesn’t give away its fundamental product when it gives free software licenses, because that IP is not its money-making fundamental product–advertising is. Anything else it gives away is simply marketing. It’s like getting the free t-shirt when you sign up for the credit card.
It just feels bigger and more like they are giving away something important because they are giving away something useful and cool. Also, it’s easy to sell IP-creators on giving away their IP if you (like Goggle) are giving away IP. But we have to remember, the IP Google (etc.) give(s) away is not of significant value to them! It is not their lifeblood, their product. No, what they give away is fluff in their business model. It’s a marketing cost on their balance sheet.
Your IP, your images, are not fluff to your business model. Your IP is your core product, and you cannot give it away.
The correct analogy for photographers who wish to use a “free” model thus is not “give away some photo (licenses) to get more photo work” but rather would be “give away t-shirts (or music or a book or a toaster or internet advertising space, even) to get more photo work.”
I couldn’t agree more with you. I like the idea of t-shirt, or a coffee mug. One of the core failures in business strategy is to operate at a speculator.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Things that are free have little to no value and there is no evidence that free evolves into brand loyalty, product loyalty or sales.
I’d like to add some more fodder to this discussion: One of the things that we’re often told to do is to offer some sort of free report, aka a buzz piece.
Well, I’ve tried this. More than once, in fact.
What I’ve found is that the offer of a free report attracts the freebie hunters. Very few of them turn into paying clients.
Same goes for giving your photos to a publication in exchange for a photo credit. Sorry to say, but I have yet to hear about that one turning into significant amounts of paying work for anyone.
Well said. As always we have some (possibly) well meaning academics (Lessig – making lots of money off his books) failing to see the wider implications of their ideologies – that large corporations will always find a way to take advantage of small businesses and creative people. Personally, I find it absolutely incredible that the “everything digital should be free” crowd still don’t understand that they are not protecting small “mash-up” artists but rather allowing large corporations to gain even more control of the marketplace. Creative Commons and other attacks on copyright are fundamentally non-progressive AND non-free-market, but 100% big multi-national corporate.
Personally thinking about giving away scanned copies of lessig’s books on PDF… just sayin’ – how about photocopies of all the texts behind the firewall at ASMP… the ones that are only available for members… let’s just give them away…
“the content – longing to be free – makes a run at the digital escape route.”
I am just being facetious of course.
These sort of things always sound good when we are getting something, when what someone else is getting comes from me – taken from me – then we think it is cool maybe not so much…
I am very frustrated by the ‘spin” that some organizations are now using to win friends from the very people that aim to put them out of business… sigh.
When car dealers give the first one for free then I might think about doing the same thing. Nah, probably not.
Thanks for writing this Leslie. I’ll be passing along the link to this article… for free. 🙂
I think the best analogy to this debate in photography is the world of open-source software. In fact there are examples where major pieces of software are given away for free. One of the largest competitors to Microsoft Windows, the Linux OS, which runs a vast majority of data centers is in itself free software. The same goes for Firefox, a browser many enjoy.
There are two interesting aspects to it: The core code is indeed free and publicly accessible to everyone. Yet, there are many companies (such as RedHat) making money in the services aspects around that software to make it more readily usable for large corporate consumers.
The other aspect is that this software was developed originally by college students and hordes of people of varying career stages who are funded through different means and can afford to contribute some time w/o compensation for whatever personal benefit or gratification they derive from doing so. The common understanding is that in return for using free software you cannot have any expectations past ‘as is’ and there are no guarantees for bug fixes or enhancements (unless you pay one of these companies that add services on top).
What does that mean to the debate on free photography?
Well, for one, any photographer complaining about CC or free, should immediately delete Firefox from all of his computers. You should stop using WordPress. You should not use an ISP that uses Linux servers to host your website. Otherwise you may be perceived as hypocritical.
Now, I say that somewhat tongue in cheek. Because I think there is a place in this economy for crowd sourced products. This is not an either/or question. It’s a question of which market segments work which way. And I think it’s a healthy debate, and any amateur photographer has to be educated to be thoughtful about the choices they make so they don’t spoil the party for everyone.
The reality is that CC and free only works in market segments where (a) there is sufficient supply of photographers who derive income from other sources and (b) where it’s possible to find a product that meets all the requirements of the client.
The first thing is that anyone who gets his income from other sources (short of being a heir to some fortune) is extremely time constrained, usually lives in non core markets, is not going to relocate, may not be able to travel, etc. A lot of these folks also don’t have a lot of the other basic business practices down which can be critical at times.
Using Seth’s quote from the other day that if you participate in an RFP or blind auction, your only competing on price. Well, maybe the time has come to not compete on price but on service. Acknowledging that unpaid amateurs have certainly proven that they can produce some superb imagery given the right circumstances, move on to compete in an area where differentiation is more easily achieved. Price isn’t one.
For the open source software industry that approach seems to have worked. Unfortunately that means photographers have to become even more business savvy which is so contrary to the artistic core that drives them.
We should also acknowledge that the economics of photo gear and distribution have changed through digital and the online services. It’s unrealistic to think that the supply of photographers who don’t have to fund their work directly is going away anytime soon. It’s also unrealistic to expect the client to pay more for a product if it’s readily available for less.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of CC. It deceives the amateurs into something that they’re not getting. The dream that something picked up in publication makes you famous doesn’t work if the same can be repeated millions of times. It would only work if that process would perform the statistically improbable to discover some incredible talent that had randomly remained unseen. Well, it’s just that improbable. Because in most cases it’s maybe talented but not incredible. And by definition it’s readily available.
It reminds me of a very nice images I saw in a friend portfolio of a buck in Yellowstone. An incredible picture. I talked to him about how he took it. Well it turns out that day there were 200 other photographers standing to the left and right of him. Most of them, if they knew how to operate a camera probably got what they would consider an incredible shot. Small differences in perspective, but that’s about it. If there’s an oversupply it’s very hard to stand out of the crowd. And if you manage, having been there, isn’t the differentiator that will do it.
One last thought – it would be interesting to survey which magazines or publications are attempting and successful in crowd sourcing. I assume there is a bias towards publications that count the amateurs among their reader base. So it’s no wonder that some of the controversy erupted over a DPP article. I doubt that people would it as satisfying if their photo would get picked up by a knitting magazine. They don’t read those. And their friends don’t read those. So the fame factor wears off. The might do it the first time, but then stop. Going back to Seth one more time, buying the first lotto ticket increases your chances of winning infinitely. The second ticket is a very different story.
Came to this post via Don’s blog. Appreciate the good fight you’re fighting 🙂
Two quick add-ons:
The correct analogy to ‘expect a client to pay more for a product that’s readily available’ – you may download and use Firefox, but if you oppose CC and free outright and in principle, you should donate $150 to the Firefox foundation, or whatever you perceive the correct usage license.
On a positive note, Linux and open source software has been around for more than 15 years. Linux has been the primary competitor to Windows, first in the B2B market but for the last few years also in the B2C market. Well, last time I checked Microsoft is still doing pretty well 🙂 They did employ a variety of tactics, some better some not, some questionable, some not. But they still make truck loads of cash.
Similarly – there have been been many players in the smart phone and eReader market. But the iPhone has been unbeatable. 2M iPads in 2 months. 600K pre-orders for 4G in the first couple of days. Lines around blocks of stores to upgrade. And the iPhone isn’t the cheapest out there. An iPad 3G will set you back $800 by the time you have accessories and then a monthly data plan. At the same time T-Mobile had a promo for giving any phone ‘away’ for $0.01 on father’s day with a 2-year contract. Hasn’t made a dent in iPhone sales. Why? They don’t compete on price. They have an unrivaled product. Many have tried, so far none have come close. Droid is the closes, but not there yet.
Jan:
I completely agree with you about the need to differentiate and elevate. Too many photographers have been able to make a living doing “good enough” work in the past. Those days are gone. The hard reality is that being a successful commercial photographer going forward will require being more of an artist (and businessperson!) than ever before. This will mean a “culling” in the number of true commercial photographers–a sad reality for many, but I’d be lying if I said I thought otherwise.
-Leslie