This started making the rounds yesterday. The Stolen Scream: A Story About Noam Galai. I thought it important to post here. Wanted your thoughts to be a part of the conversation.
IMHO, this is:
Exciting.
Scary.
Different.
Opportunistic.
Cannibalistic.
Visionary.
Divisive.
Should we celebrate it or hate it? Lawsuits or a new suit of clothes that recognizes the times?
Two obvious sides with no obvious answer. And on and on… It’s our newest classic challenge as a rapidly evolving industry with the rapid deployment and sharing of information.
What say you?
(via the nice folks at fstoppers)
To sue someone for copyright infringement is very expensive to do. You pay until you collective been there.
This is wrong in so many ways but who’s going help this poor guy sue and collect? No one. He has only the satisfaction of knowing his idea was and is in Great demand.
I wanted to punch a wall after watching this. Nobody can convince me that it’s “ok” for such mass theft, no matter how much “recognition” this kid gets. Two wrongs do not make a right.
IMHO there is no excuse for anyone to stole anything from anyone. There were some good causes/uses for the picture, but even though, the people should have asked for authorization before publishing it. What would be, at least, a matter of kindness and respect towards Noam. Not to mention the people and companies who made a profit from it without paying a single buck for the author.
Concerning Noam loss, he has legal ways to be rewarded for his good work.
This should be terrifying enough, but what really caught my attention is the general laziness and lack of creativity people are showing around the world. The photo is a good picture by itself, very graphic and strong. That said, I think the image is also easy to mimic and should, at the worst scenario, be used as inspiration.
No one who used it unauthorized seemed to bother even to think in creating something by themselves.
The poverty of ideas and the lack of earnest desire to produce some work of any kind is the greatest loss for everyone involved, IMHO.
People should pay for the image. I simple way to prevent this is for photographers is to watermark their photos with a clear copyright mark.
For those of you who asked, I did pay and copyrighted the screaming photos few years ago.
And for those of you who wanted to see my other work you can go here and check it out: http://www.noamgalai.com .
Thanks for all the comments! Glad you found my story interesting…