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)
Look, we’re a nonprofit bicycling magazine and we pay photographers. We may not pay what high-end commercial magazines do but we do pay. Photographers work long, hard hours often just hoping to catch lightning in a bottle, and when they do and that image is used by others, they should be rewarded financially. Absolutely no other person or business entity should be able make money from the use of this image without remuneration and, if they have, he should find a lawyer who’d be willing to put in the time it will take to make things right … and make some money. It’s easy to blame “the internet” for this problem but it’s all about people – the people that create and the people that use the creation. There are weasels enough on both sides so I hope Noah stands up to this and doesn’t allow others to benefit financially from his work.
Noam should collect all the copies of his image, make it into a book or exhibition … at least that’ll make him some money back … and then he should take new and more pics .. his name is certainly out there now … capitalize and build his photography on that … if that what he want’s. Otherwise it’s just a bit unfortunate for him .. I guess at least he’s got a National Geographic cover .-)
Noam’s case somehow reminds me a lot of the famous image called Guerrillero Heroico of Che Guevara. The photographer Alberto Korda never received anything for this iconic image. By his own choice. He never asked for anything from anybody. He believed in the marxist ideology and therefore wanted the image to spread which could then help spread their political ideas.
He later sued an advertising company that tried to exploit the image commercially. Apparently things were settled out of court for 50.000 dollars. Which he then donated to a good cause in Cuba.
How is that for principles!