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)
Most upsetting that entire organisations, writers & who all are making money out of his picture and getting away with it. It is simply not done. Photography as a profession is redundant if everything is just for that warm fuzzy feeling.
He’s happy that the picture is out & is liked by so many, bt do those so many even know about his existence? for them it’s just some graphic off the net.
I want this to stop. I feel like the dutch boy with his finger in the hole in the Levee. I want a copyright lawyer to take this on and sue every commercial use that an American court can reach out to. I want American big media to cover this and make the public aware that the work of others is not a profitable free for all. Could backfire.
Most of the theft I experience falls into 2 categories: 1)from large companies making huge profits while I have bills to pay 2) not copyright infringement but highly specific plagiarism from other photographers in social media, so much so that one even asked for some coding help, then took that help to blatantly copy a whole page on from one of my sites. Also written content copyright infringement is common in photography but not noticed since our work is primarily images. For example, I’ve watched a particular blogger take 3 of my photography blog posts and slightly change the wording. Naturally, he gets 10x the RTs, of course.
The new wave of things seem to be against artists and basically a “get over it” mood pushed towards us. I’m trying to figure out how having what you love taken, profited off of or exploited is supposed to feel good? I guess only to those with severe low self-esteem that process any attention as “positive” and any insult as “flattery.”
I agree with Seth Godin’s view on giving gifts and sharing work, but notice both of these things involve my choice. The sitaution I describe above did not offer me any choice on the matter. Artists are supposed to be what, creativity machines churning out products without any choices or opinions on the matter? This seems to be the general view of many people, from the average person on the web to scholars. Sigh. Whatever…
This case is especially wild because this his actual face….wow. But in the end it’s up to the artist. If some artists let its slide then it is their choice and if some enforce copyright, it is their choice too. But both sets of choices will set the tone for the overall issue.
(the actual photograph is very awesome…)
Just saw it on fstoppers – pretty wild..!
The internet is the Wild West…really anything goes.
If you don’t want to be exploited there’s very little you can do to arm yourself against it.
The only chance of winning is to be a more successful artist than the rip-off artist.
=s=