I take issue here with this very negative article – both with its central point and with the factual mistakes that could have been so easily avoided by talking to us and looking at our guides, rather than relying on half an hour of selective googling for research.

The vast majority of photographers submitting images to our Schmap travel guides are neither ‘naifs’ nor ‘aspirant pros’ – they are travelers to or residents in the cities that our guides cover – in the most part, hobbyists/amateurs who have never had any commercial objective for their work.

The minority of photographers submitting photos to our guides that do have a commercial objective see this inclusion as useful, on the basis that:

i) Schmap Guides feature photos at a maximum width of 150 pixels – there simply isn’t a commercial market for images at this low resolution.

ii) Because photos in our guides are at low resolution, many readers click through to see high resolution originals in the context of the photographers’ full portfolios. The popularity of our guides – more than 10 million (desktop version) have been downloaded since first release in March 2006 – therefore gives direct marketing benefit for photographers seeking to monetize their high-resolution images.

iii) Photographers with a commercial objective often have websites and marketing material where they cite prior publication. Schmap Guides have been reviewed favorably in a diverse range of traditional, travel and technology focused media (including TIME, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PC World and Lifehacker): some photographers see this – citing publication in a Schmap Guide when presenting/marketing their work – as useful extra credibility.

These photographers (the minority submitting photos to our guides who have a commercial objective) are not ‘undercutting their own future’ – they are granting non-exclusive licenses to low resolution copies of their images, with obvious reciprocal marketing benefit for themselves. Basic common sense.

This central point aside, there are a number of factual mistakes in the article worth correcting:

“Every page and every guide is marked … ‘Copyright © 2007 Schmap, Inc. All rights reserved.’ This is a direct contradiction to most CC licensing which insists any derivative works retain the share-alike terms of the incorporated works.”

There is actually no contradiction at all here – a publisher is not entitled to assign one particular CC image to a whole website when it includes images and text with a mixture of different CC licenses, or a mixture of CC and all rights reserved material. In the case of our Schmap Guides, each individual CC image is marked clearly with the specific variant CC license that the photographer intended – links to the full resolution originals facilitate share-alike.

“Schmap say over 10m guides have been downloaded since March 2006, and each one contains even more ads than it does photos.”

This figure is correct, but a download of any one of our desktop guides will confirm that they are currently completely free of advertisements. We have recently made some of our guides available online – these contain Google and Amazon ads, in common with EDUK and many other websites. Photographers submitting photos to our guides are very much aware of the advertising component.

“But since then Schmap seem to have further streamlined the tedious business of asking permission, by not asking permission.”

We ALWAYS ask permission, when this is required (certain CC licensed images allow publishers to use these without asking permission).

“Once an image has been released under CC, you can’t rewind the licence to more restrictive terms. Copies already circulating with CC licence would undermine any that claimed to reserve more rights.”

This is only partially correct: photographers can and do change the licenses of their original (high resolution) images, after licensing low resolution copies of these images for publication in our guides. In this case, someone seeing a low resolution copy of a photo in one of our guides marked as a CC image would not be entitled to rely on this license for use of the high resolution original. On a related note, while license of low resolution copies to our guides is perpetual (necessary, because our guides can be downloaded to readers’ computers for use offline), if any photographer subsequently decides to change his or her mind, we immediately remove the photos from our online guides, and from their desktop counterparts (for downloads from that point).

Luke Ritchie,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

Thanks for the link and your comments, but I’m not in fact a lawyer — I just believe in reading the fine print.

You are correct (as far as I can tell when I read the licenses) when you note that when a rightsholder/photographer changes the terms of the license (e.g., making the CC license more restrictive, or moving from CC to “all rights reserved”), any prior legal use under a prior CC license is still legal. This’d still be the case if CC weren’t around, however — even if a rightsholder decided to claim “all rights reserved” on an image previously made available as public domain, I’d think that anyone who used it when it was public domain wouldn’t be restricted when the license changed.

Luke Ritchie’s comment is perplexing and disingenuous. As Bob Croxford pointed out, there’s no threshhold for what images are and aren’t commercially viable. (For instance, a magazine recently agreed to compensate me for their unauthorized use of a small image — it was maybe 1“x1.5”.)

More from Ritchie: “Because photos in our guides are at low resolution, many readers click through to see high resolution originals in the context of the photographers’ full portfolios.”

I’d be very interested in hearing exact numbers from Schmap — I assume they’re able to track the clickthrough rate. What proportion constitutes “many readers?”

“We ALWAYS ask permission, when this is required (certain CC licensed images allow publishers to use these without asking permission).”

So Schmap is now asserting that they are using images under the CC license? I haven’t heard from them lately, but their Terms of Submission that I was asked (and declined) to agree to didn’t do this at all. They evidently found me through a Creative Commons search on Flickr, but then they asked me to agree to their TOS document — this suggests to me that Schmap knows that they’re a commercial enterprise asking to use photos in a commercial context, and therefore this prospective use would not be covered under a CC license that includes the “NonCommercial” provision.

I don’t know which specific photos cobalt123 is referring to (btw, sqweegee, the permalink to his/her post is here), but a quick check of shots of Tucscon in cobalt123’s Flickr photostream from a while back show them to be under a BY/NC CC license. Is Ritchie saying that a.) Schmap’s proposed use is noncommercial; or that b.) cobalt123’s CC license on the specific photos that Schap used allows commercial use? Because otherwise, it appears that Schmap has used images they weren’t entitled to.

In this particular instance, as it turns out in the post you linked to, cobalt123 is OK with Schmap’s use, but if s/he had not been, the damage would have already been done, and done by Schmap. Schmap’s use of images seems to me to be pretty clearly commercial in nature, and if they used BY/NC-licensed photos without permission, they would appear to be in violation of the photographer’s rights.

I have just received the same:

Hi A…,

I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has been short-listed for inclusion in the fourth edition of our Schmap Vienna Guide, to be published early February 2008.

( here is the link to the shortlist )

Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can:
i) See which of your photos has been short-listed.
ii) Submit or withdraw your photo from our final selection phase.
iii) Learn how we credit photos in our Schmap Guides.
iv) Browse online or download the second edition of our Schmap Vienna Guide.

While we offer no payment for publication, many photographers are pleased to submit their photos, as Schmap Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure, and are free of charge to readers. Photos are published at a maximum width of 150 pixels, are clearly attributed, and link to high-resolution originals at Flickr.

Our submission deadline is Wednesday, January 30. If you happen to be reading this message after this date, please still click on the link above (our Schmap Guides are updated frequently – photos submitted after this deadline will be considered for later releases).

Best regards,

Clicking the link leads to a Schmap page where one of my photo is shown and where I should give the rights to Schmap

Conditions are:
TERMS OF SUBMISSION

THESE TERMS OF SUBMISSION (THE “TERMS”) REPRESENT A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU, EITHER AN INDIVIDUAL PERSON OR A SINGLE LEGAL ENTITY (“YOU”), AND SCHMAP, INC. (“SCHMAP”). BY CLICKING THE “SUBMIT” BUTTON, YOU CONFIRM YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS.

1. PHOTOS
The term “Photos” refers to one or more photographs and/or images licensed by You to Schmap pursuant to the Terms.

2. LICENSE GRANT
Subject to the terms and conditions herein, You hereby grant Schmap a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license to include the Photos in the current and/or subsequent releases of Schmap’s destination/local guides.

3. FAIR USE RIGHTS
Nothing in these Terms is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use, first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws.

4. LIMITATIONS
The license granted in Section 2 above is made subject to and limited by the following express limitations:

(a) Schmap may only distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and/or publicly perform the Photos pursuant to the Terms.

(b) Schmap shall be required to keep intact all copyright notices for the Photos and provide, reasonable to the medium or means of utilization, the name of the original author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, for attribution in Licensor’s copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, and a credit (implemented in any reasonable manner) identifying the use of the Photos in any derivative Photos created by Schmap.

© Schmap shall, to the extent reasonably practicable, provide Internet link(s) to your Photos.

(d) Schmap shall not sublicense the Photos.

(e) Schmap shall indicate to the public that You reserve all rights with respect to use of the Photos.

(f) Schmap shall continue to make its destination/local guides available at no cost to end users.

5. RIGHTS
You confirm that You own or otherwise control all of the rights to the Photos and that use of the Photos by Schmap will not infringe or violate the rights of any third parties.

6. NO OBLIGATION
Schmap shall have no obligation whatsoever to reproduce, distribute, broadcast, or otherwise make use of the Photos licensed by You to Schmap hereunder.

7. NO AFFILIATION
While the Flickr website and/or Flickr API have been used to short-list your Photos, Schmap claims no affiliation or partnership with Flickr.

8. MISCELLANEOUS
If any provision of the Terms is ruled unenforceable, such provision shall be enforced to the extent permissible, and the remainder of the Terms shall remain in effect. The Terms constitute the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the Photos licensed hereunder. There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Photos not specified hereunder. If there is any dispute about or involving the Terms or the license granted hereunder, You agree that such dispute shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions. You agree to personal jurisdiction by and venue in the state and federal courts of the State of California, City of San Francisco. The license granted in the Terms may not be modified without the mutual written agreement of You and Schmap.

I never have gone into learning which different permissions and licenses are available at flickr and what they mean, simply had chosen: ‘all rights reserved’

At a loss how to react I am trying now to find information on the net and ran across this site.
here and elsewhere I always read that Schnap searches CC licensed photos only ( I have no idea what that means actually ), but as stated my photos have all rights reserved.

my questions:
has schmap already made an infringement by putting my photo up at their shortlist page?

how to react?

besides possibly hurting pros, why should I not give my permission?

Wow, the ignorance displayed here is astounding.

First of all, where did you come up with “For now, all are content to share for free, but the expectation is that enough exposure and recognition should eventually lead to fees, fame and stardom if you are good enough.”? I’ve been on Flickr since almost the beginning, as are most of my friends, and I’ve never heard of anyone thinking like that.

You’d have to have rocks in your head to think you can jump from putting snapshots on Flickr to getting professional contacts. NOBODY thinks like that!

It’s 2008 for pete’s sake. The photography business has changed drastically in the past ten years. The world (not just Flickr) is awash with cheap digital cameras and billions of snapshots. The idea that every use of a photo must be a commercial venture simply no longer exists.

People like me use Flickr because we want to share our non-professional photos with friends, and anyone else who wants to see them. If somebody wants to use a couple in a free travel guide mashup, then why the Hell not? I certainly enjoy USING things like free Web based travel guides, so why not contribute to them as well?

In fact, three or four of my photos are being used by Schmap. In every case, they are snapshots that I never had any intention of using for commercial purposes. Letting Schmap use low-res versions of those (which link back to my Flickr account) costs me nothing (not even opportunity cost) and it helps them out with a free, and presumably useful, service.

Schmap would never work if they had to pay commercial rates for the images they use. And it’s not like they’re stealing the images; they ask. If you don’t want your photos used, just say no!

I also write hotel reviews on TripAdvisor. I don’t expect to get paid for that; I do it as part of a community of travellers who are looking out for each other, even if the site makes money from advertising (so what?). Plus I sometimes give out (my own) recipies on my blog, or give instructions on how to do things. I don’t charge for that either. Nor do I expect money when I’m interviewed on TV or radio. Nor do I charge a membership fee to read my blog or look at my photo blog.

Old school commercial photographers have to come to grips with the reality of a world filled with billions of free images, it’s as simple as that. Pros should charge for professionally done, high quality work, and stop bugging amateurs for occasionally giving away snapshots.

You know what? I’m going to concede that you are right on most counts. I came to this post with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, as I was following a link from another blog where Schmap was dismissed as a “scam” without any real explanation.

However, I maintain my point that the oversupply of photographs, as you put it, is due to many things and should not be blamed on Flickr users or upstarts like Schmap.

I feel your pain when it comes to selling your work as a pro. As a writer, the same thing is happening. Blogs have created an oversupply of written material. The parallels are quite striking.

On the other hand, I was in a magazine stand about an hour ago. There were hundreds of magazines all around me, on many different topics. I think you would have to look long and hard to find any content in any of them that came from blogs or Flickr. While it is true that a lot of magazines are lowering their standards for economical reasons, I submit that you blame the EDITORS for that, not the people who use Flickr or write blogs. There is no doubt that Flickr and blogs put pressure on magazines, but maybe the end result will be the demise of low rent magazines that were crappy anyway, and the higher quality ones will become even better as a way of differentiating themselves from “free” stuff.

Because no matter how much anybody complains about it, digital photography, Web 2.0, and their combined effect are here, and there’s nothing anyone can do to make it go away. The only thing to do, as you said, is adapt or die.

Maybe the following has no bearing on this discussion, but it’s on my mind, on the same channel, so here goes. Almost 20 years ago I worked for a stock photo agency as a researcher. Magazine editors would send their requests and I’d go through our files to see if we had something to match. Very often, the requests were for extremely bland subjects, like “recycling bin on suburban lawn” or “stop sign.” I was astounded at the fact that so many of the shots we sold — for high rates — were little more than dull snapshots but they just happened to fit the requirements perfectly.

Several times, when the agency did not have a shot to fit the requirements, I shot it myself and sold the image. (For the record, I never undercut the agency’s photographers; I only did that when we didn’t have what the client was looking for.) One time it was a photo of a mattress. I just went home, pulled the sheets off the bed, and took a shot of the mattress. Another time it was an egg with two yolks; so I broke two eggs into a bowl, pulled out some of the extra white, and bingo, an egg with two yolks. No studio, no fancy lighting, just me in my kitchen by window light. I got about 50 bucks for each of those shots (the agency got the other 50) and I was amazed that editors were paying that kind of money for grab shots. (That’s when 50 bucks was worth something — at least to me!)

I can’t help but think that THAT is the market most devastated by all this Flickr-type stuff. The stuff that wasn’t really worth much, but was still paying well. It’s true that a lot of people made their living off of that kind of bland work, but times change and people have to change with them. Should we feel sorry that the job market for urban chimney sweeps has dried up? Do we lament the lack of job opportunities for scriveners? We’ve moved on.

But again, I feel your pain about the hardships of getting paid for your work. But I’m not convinced it’s anything new. Editors have been prying cheap work “for exposure” out of contributors for decades. Ditto their editorial interns, who now work for free. But they worked for free back in 1970 too, and 1980 and 1990.

But I’m not going to challenge you any further on that, because you know much more about it than I do, given that you are in that market. However, my original concern is that I don’t think people should zero in on Flickr and the like when worrying these issues. It’s there; there are many factors at play, and there’s little can be done about it. Picking on Flickr and Web 2.0 mashups doesn’t do anything, and it comes off sounding like finger pointing.

Been talking about this subject on Buzz — and many of us are flickr users, and some of us, yes, have worked as commercial photographers. Great article, and very interesting comments as well… I really think Tony Sleep’s comment crystalizes some of the points nicely.