Unfortunately far more has gone on behind the scenes than is apparent in our published comments, that’s why we’ve got moderation turned on now. It was as if you innocently turn up a different road and find yourself in Angry Amerika. Somehow that post attracted a whole troop of nutters. We’ve had various demands sent from fake email addresses, rather laughable threats of legal action (we’re in Australia, beyond the stubby arm of US law, and we have accounts with ISPs outside the US), mild hate mail (we’re anti-american socialist scum apparently when we thought we were just average Australians), much worse hate mail, and some lengthy rants.

Now we’re being harassed through a mild form of identity theft, being signed up to a bizarre range of email newsletters. No doubt the porn will be next. We know who is doing that because of the particular email address they are using.

As it happens we were sympathetic to Maproom Systems too, that’s why we immediately removed the image. We grumpily removed another on (genuine) request as well. We may use photos without permission (within fair use guidelines) but we won’t use photos against people’s will, even if they had previously and non-revocably given permission by CC licencing them. It’s simple, if you want people to ask your permission, reserve all rights. Creative Commons is explicitly about giving permission to anyone to use your photo without asking your permission. And you cannot invent your own interpretation of non-commercial, it only means that your image cannot be sold by someone else. Creative Commons have made it clear that blogs with advertising qualify as non-commercial use. If you have a problem with that, again, reserve all rights.

Personally we CC-BY-NC-SA licence all our flickr photos but we understand what that means. Creative Commons really needs to toughen up its procedures to ensure that CC users actually understand what they are doing. Of course we could save ourselves a lot of grief by doing what 99% of blogs do and just use images without attribution. That way you are pretty much untraceable. We aren’t perfect but we do try to do the right thing most of the time and one of the annoying problems of Creative Commons is that by trying to do the right thing you make yourself into an easier target for the misguided.

TechCrunch pretty much said it all in their post Misunderstanding copyright law and ruining everyone’s fun about a similar (but much worse) situation:

“Societal ideals around what constitutes ownership over art are changing. People who try to protect and silo off their work are simply being ignored. Those that embrace the community, and give back to it not only allowing but asking for their work to be mashed up, re-used and otherwise embraced are being rewarded with attention. At the core is a basic implicit understanding - if you want to be part of the community, you have to give back to it, too.
See our related post, “Being Stupid and Litigious Is No Way To Go Through Life.”

Re your photo, yes we “took it without asking permission, without compensation, and then proceeded to use that work to generate profits” (profits? LOL) because you granted permission for us to do that when you used the creative commons licence. I can only reiterate that you should reconsider your use of creative commons licencing because you clearly do not fully understand what it means. For starters, it means that others can now use your images without explicit permission from you or any contact with you whatsoever and they can use them in contexts that you may not approve of.

Secondly the Creative Commons guidelines make it clear that our usage is legitimate. There is a whole body of discussion around this issue on the web here but this quote from the first site should suffice:

“Is it allowed to show e.g. a CC-licensed photo on a webpage which also includes ads to the side if the image uses the “non-commercial” clause? …(The author) recently received another confirmation from Creative Commons’ Lawrence Lessig: yes, the CC organization believes this being OK is the best reading of the license. Not that they’re saying you’re allowed to directly sell the CC content or anything, but you’re allowed to display ads if you use CC-NC content. But it’s also a matter of how you display ads, Lawrence disclaims, saying that there could be certain advertising schemes that take it too far.”

Some discussions note that it is wise to avoid CC-NC material in order to avoid wrangling with people who have used the licence for their work without any idea of its implications. I would now strongly agree with that.

In addition, MaproomSystems, the granting of a creative commons licence is irrevocable. Since it is clear that you have a problem with the results of the licence you have granted you really should not use creative commons in future. I would guess that the only control you now have over your existing CC-NC licenced work is to remove those images from your flickr site, an unfortunate outcome for a fine body of work, or else learn to live with it being used to illustrate positions you may not agree with.

Now although I am prepared to continue this discussion let’s do it by email rather than bore the readers any further?

What the majority of sites on the internet do or don’t do is quite irrelevant to the discussion. I’m only interested in what yours does, and only in regards to my content. All of my work has the license it does so that it can be freely used by others for the primary purpose of education; If you put ads on your site, your “primary purpose” suddenly becomes very, very unclear to your audience, and when you’re using my photograph it gives the distinct appearance that I, myself, am a willing participant and contributor, which I am obviously not. In addition, it frankly boggles my mind why, as a simple courtesy, you would not have simply asked the owners of these photos in advance if you could use them. The free exchange of information is all fine and good, and I believe in it strongly myself, but when others are using my work to make money off it that I myself will never see, it becomes a completely different animal altogether.

That point can not be too strongly stated: I created a piece of artwork, you then took it without asking permission, without compensation, and then proceeded to use that work to generate profits for yourself. Whether this was 9 cents or 9 million dollars, makes no difference whatsoever.

I don’t see any real reason to dwell on the matter of “not wanting to belong to any club that would have me as a member,” because as I said in my last comment, I think the “minor difference” between our mission statements is actually quite pronounced. When I see the rare example of creative and constructive adaptive reuse, I document it, but in the much greater majority of cases I see a widespread persistent loss of historical sites, and the destruction of things that could easily have been repurposed, but were not, and that is what I feel should be brought to the attention of the public, more than the exceptional cases of preservation. The concepts do, obviously, overlap, and if 1) I had been asked in advance, and 2) Either you were paying me for usage rights or else your site did not have any third-party advertising, I would have gladly agreed to the use of the image without a moment’s hesitation, as I have done many other websites in the past, and will continue to do in the future.

I could point out that the para you prefer specifically says “consisting SOLELY of CC BY-NC-SA licensed” material. We use very little NC material and it was all before we put adsense on our blog. Our general usage of photos falls easily into fair use tenets and is no worse than the average on the web and better than most. We go out of our way to use creative commons material and our aim is to aggregate material that can direct traffic to other sites in order to encourage creative thinking about adaptive reuse. In several years now we have only ever had one usage complainant (who wasn’t a copyright holder) and one (understandably) wounded architect but many messages of thanks.

We could also point out that the Heidelberg Project blog linked to our story. The real lesson of the Heidelberg Project is its generosity and inclusiveness and the fact that its creators have chosen optimistic activism and creativity rather than bitterness and anger.

We used one of your photos because we admired the photo and thought we could be drawing attention to your heroic solo project to save the world. In future we’ll admire it from as great a distance as possible. And “if I might be blunt”, you should consider reserving all rights on your photos, creative commons is designed to facilitate sharing and is probably out of keeping with your approach.

I’m afraid that I disagree with your interpretation of the license guidelines to which you refer, specifically in regards to the following statements :

“(3) Is the NC-licensed work being used in connection with advertisements for third party products or services where the NC-licensed work is the primary draw or a is substantial amount, both qualitatively and quantitatively? For example, does a podcast consisting solely of CC BY-NC-SA licensed music have ads for a record store at the start and end of the podcast.
(i) Yes - license violation; this is not a noncommercial use. ”
(endquote)

If I might be blunt, this blog seems to consist of nothing BUT pilfered images which you, yourself, had nothing to do with the creation of, and those contents would thus by my estimation most definitely be “The primary draw or a substantial amount, both qualitatively and quantitatively.”

I do not want my work to appear as if I have consciously permitted its use on a website with google, amazon, or any other ads. These make a site look cheap, crass, splog-like, and most certainly commercial in nature (I particularly enjoyed google’s suggestion, when i just looked at your front page, that your visitors buy some big metal pre-fab buildings in which to house one’s gas-guzzling RV and Motorboat). If you’re making 9 cents per day with these ads, perhaps you might consider the possibility that serious artists and historians such as myself will be regarding them as completely unprofessional in appearance and nature, and that revenue you’re earning will, in the long run, never make up for the damage to your reputation they are making.

I have been working on the creation of a historical organization for the past decade, and in that time I have suffered tremendous financial hardships due to the fact that I choose not engage in cheap parlor games such as this to bring some small amount of revenue. I have spent the last two years on flickr itself, personally engaging individuals and developing communities for the purpose of additionally - and only occasionally- making use of other parties’ works in my projects, but only then by ALSO openly securing their SPECIFIC permission in advance if their image is to be “featured” in a size and context approaching what you are doing on this site. Having thus taken such rather grueling steps to respect not only the letter of the law but also the feelings and opinions of the creators of said work themselves, I find it frankly baffling that you’re even attempting to continue making any sort of argument about the matter, and further continuing to make use of my photograph.

In addition, I would like to address the matter of my own photograph’s intended purpose. It is simply a small part of my larger “Arsenal of Democracy” project:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maproomsystems/sets/72157594562178476/
which is intended as a photographic survey of Detroit, Michigan, and the specific images of Heidelberg found within it are solely there for the purpose of historical documentation, and I would ABSOLUTELY NEVER consider making them available as prints or any other venue-generating reproduction, as their subject matter consists entirely of the work of Mr. Guyton, who himself holds full rights to such, and thus any other use I might make of them would ONLY be done after first obtaining his permission and blessing for such, and following that, SHARING ANY REVENUE with him that I may obtain.

Finally, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t point out the time and energy which is required in my line of work, to produce a constantly growing but already sizable archive of images and accompanying information which, ironically enough, generally involves the specific theme of “Adaptive Reuse,” but more specifically, in the much larger and tragic flip-side of the coin where no such activity is taking place at all, and neglect, abandonment, and demolition are the status quo. Specific projects such as my overview of the story of a particular house in my community:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maproomsystems/sets/72157603904798901/

comes immediately to mind, as that entire project has involved financial loss, incredible blunders, the destruction of historic structures, questionable social engineering, and may result in the bankruptcy of my city- ALL OF IT HAVING BEEN DONE UNDER THE UMBRELLA OF “ADAPTIVE REUSE,” which, like most of the essential tenets of “New Urbanism,” has rapidly become a buzz word with no qualitative meaning whatsoever, able to be employed at the whims of developers and politicians to justify any absurd project they might imagine. Thus, regardless of the purity of your intentions, I am additionally irritated to be associated with a website that seems more interested in drawing in a narrow audience to celebrate incredibly rare examples of “Adaptive Reuse” than it does in addressing the much greater problem of why it virtually never happens at all.

Thank you.

I’m the creator of the photograph of doors featured in this blog post. Please note that my images are covered by the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license, and due to the Google ads on your page, your use of this image is therefore in violation of said license, and I am requesting its immediate removal.

Thank you.