So I said, great, let’s look through the last five together. And not all of them were in the public domain. So, I said, “How do you think about the use of these images?”
“Photographers are welcome to file a complaint with Twitter, as long as they provide proof. Twitter contacts me and I’d be happy to remove it,” he said. “I’m sure the majority of photographers would be glad to have their work seen by the massives.”
I pressed him on this point. Shouldn’t the onus be on him and Cameron to get those rights from the photographers they assume would be grateful?
“It would not be practical,” he said. “The majority of the photographers are deceased. Or hard to find who took the images.”
Thought #1: Paying/crediting people who create your content? Pshaw! Playing by the rules generally doesn’t result in people having stories written about them in the Atlantic, especially not stories about them being disruptive influences to the traditional business model.
Thought #2: I should be neither surprised nor saddened by the idea that New Buzz Thing Online Doesn’t Care About Content Creators, given the history of the Internet, and yet, somehow I am.
Thought #3: Seeing this kind of behavior be not only accepted, I guess, but rewarded by the wider Internet at large – oh, people may complain about this, but I doubt that History in Pictures will really suffer in any way because of it – is this very demoralizing thing, a reminder that the Internet not only demands NEW CONTENT continually, but continually disregards and devalues said content in the process. Works of quality are less important than quantity of work.