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Comment by wicknicks | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you. But this shows the culture in fields different from ours. What the photography area is witnessing is what we saw when free software came about. Smart photographers are using this to their advantage, whereas others are cribbing about it.

I wonder how hard it would be to negotiate a deal where the photos are given for free, but with a caption or footnote pointing to the photographer's website. That would make the calendar the best advertisement he has had in years. People are going to be staring at his photos all year long!

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And those who see the credit will contact the photographer and ask if they can use his work for free "because it will give him exposure." If everyone did this then the photographer would never be paid.

Not so sure about that. As people on the thread commented, the popularity could lead to better contracts. For example, wedding photographers get paid quite well. If there are so many "free" contracts, that itself is a valid reason to start charging for the next one: I won't do your work, unless you pay me -- sorry, I have too many requests, and need to prioritize.

And if that happens and the entire market for professional photographers collapses, it's not a big deal. If there's no market for a service, that service doesn't have a right to exist.

The way to succeed in the marketplace is to make something distinctive worth paying for, not to lash out at other people who give stuff away for free.

Also, a simple "image credit: Person X" doesn't have to imply that the work was done for free. A potential client doesn't need to know how much previous portfolio pieces cost.

Except that it was a viable career and now you have feel that were earning a living finding their skills useless economically. Next thing you know their skills are just as marketable as a highschool drop-outs. I think one of the great problems of this age is that skills and wages fluctuate too wildly to make long-term plans like our parents did. I'll take more inefficiency for more stability any old day.

I'll take more inefficiency for more stability any old day.

As would all of the newspaper classified ad salespeople, VHS tape manufacturers, blacksmiths, haberdashers, etc.

I see where you're coming from, and it's a valid perspective, although I don't know how realistic it is. All of the attempts to stabilize skills/wages seem to lead to guilds/cartels which keep prices artificially high and harm innovation.

If anything, this economic reality makes the case for a strong social safety net. If someone's livelihood is profoundly disrupted by technology, they should be given a meaningful opportunity to retrain and/or pivot onto something workable without suffering complete and total financial (or physical, in the case of losing one's health care) ruin.

Well that is, naturally your choice, just as long as you don't try to force this on others.

You see I am pissed that I don't have my flying care and robotic servant already. I want progress and will take whatever stability that is necessary to do that.

It takes a long time to accumulate enough knowledge to get the pattern recognition and competent creativity to be an expert in any field. Brains have speed limits. It'd be nice if the valuation of the field lasted long enough to make it worth acquiring and increasing that knowledge. Fun thought; what's it like to compete directly against 7 billion people? Do all specialized skills become close to worthless if you're not part of a restrictive "guild" (bar exams, medical board exams, etc) or part of a corporation?

I wonder how hard it would be to negotiate a deal where the photos are given for free, but with a caption or footnote pointing to the photographer's website.

That's basically how one of the Creative Commons licenses works. It's a valid choice for photographers, but not the only choice.

That may be true now, but if the commercial value of these photographs asymptotically approach zero (or close enough for us) then that may be all they are worth -- the choice becomes credit or nothing at all.

And at that time the photographers would properly choose credits over nothing at all.

They'd properly choose another job.

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