Here is my view on intellectual property

In this day and age, copying any material off of the internet is as easy as it should be. And I celebrate this. I've grown up with "borrowing" from the swedish library. Something that has helped me develop talents to such a level that it could be categorised as being of worth for others.

Everything new is based on elements from the old. So when it comes to my work, I feel very strongly that my pictures should be freely available for personal use. That is why I use Creative Commons. Because it's the only way to make this clear. All my images are marked (literally) with this information, and meta data is included in processed files, which makes the copyright rules quite explicit when posted on facebook and the likes.

Just to explain creative commons a bit. It is a way to clarify how people can use other's intellectual property. Normal copyright pretty much sucks at clarify "special" cases, because international copyright just says:

  1. If you want to make a copy, you always have to ask the owner.

  2. If you want to publish a copy, you always have to ask the owner.

  3. oh, and btw, you always have to name the author.

Creative Commons is a way to make clarifications to these rules. The (creative commons) license that I use make the following clarification:

You may copy my pictures if:

  1. It is for personal use (or for a non-profit).

  2. You mention the author, when publicly published.

  3. You use the same license when you remix my work.

The official license is here Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

I love remix culture, so I encourage people to use the pictures for personal projects (under the license mentioned).

Here is a message for the companies that receive a bill from my lawyers. Sadly some of you assume you can just use my works for your own benefit.

Some organisations refer to making honest mistakes (not knowing international copyright laws when working with media, not knowing who the author is etc). I honestly have no way of knowing whether that is the case or not, and I chose not to take your word for it, because your word does not pay the bills. You have benefited from my work, and a compensation is in order. In all honesty, I can’t believe that in todays world, it can be unclear to any person working with media, what the rules for copyright are. I will not spend my time educating the employees in your business how to do your job.

Some organisations dont know I took the picture they are using. That might also be the case, but I can’t take your word for it. If you dont know who took the picture, dont use it.

I've teamed up with photoclaim.com who helps me solve those kind of situations. Some organisation try to reach out to me personally for settlements. Listen, if I wanted to spend my time figuring out how to get in contact with the right person and not end up in a spam folder, bargaining for a fair compensation, and getting you to take my seriously, then i really wouldn’t have any time left in the day. So talk with the lawyers that I hired to deal with this in my behalf.

So this is a heads up. I’m much cheaper if you book me ahead, than simply copying my work. I'd love to work with you, so reach out, and let’s work together.