Licenses

I recently joined www.myows.com, finding a way to protect my photographs. Just earlier today, I realized I might have been choosing the wrong license lately.

Usually, for stock, I choose Attribution Non-Commercial. For prints I choose Attribution No Derivatives.

When I looked earlier with my mother, I realized the list of licenses was longer and that there were probably better choices. For instance, there's a license: Attribution No Derivatives Non-Commercial. This would probably be the best license to use because I don't want people altering my prints or trying to sell them to others. But now I'm not sure! Any advice on choosing the best license for photographs? I'm fairly sure I will have to go and change all my photographs' licenses now.

Mine is simple. ©John Kleb, All Rights Reserved

Digital work or scanned in work already has a time/date in the EXIF data. You can register work at http://www.copyright.gov/ for a pretty ironclad defense if needed. But, there's only so much you can do with places outside the US. Certain places have rather relaxed (non-existent) laws and recognition of US law. You can send all the take-down notices you want and it won't matter. They hit anything naked first since naked sells. After that you may see a stolen image or two on the occasional Russian or Chinese ad, but not often.

The whole creative commons limited free use thing is a scam in my opinion. It's up to lawyers and judge to decide what you allowed your work to be used for. ©All Rights Reserved doesn't mean your work can never be used or reproduced, it means you have to give specific permission for the use. If you get your work represented by a stock agency it's a different discussion and you're compensated for the use. Poorly. But just throwing work out there and saying use it without me knowing, but only specifically, is a bad idea in my opinion. It's like saying here's the keys to my Corvette; only drive it on this street and don't go over 45mph. It creates too much temptation for those who lack character.