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A key change at iCommons
If you're not part of the iCommons mailing list, take a look at the letter that Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons, sent to the list yesterday:
Dear friends,
At the 2 August iCommons Board Meeting, the board decided to make some difficult but necessary changes at iCommons. It has become clear over the past months that our vision for iCommons is different from the... more
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How One Man Stopped Worrying, And Learnt To Love CC...
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 One of the things that freelance journalists learn very quickly is that your work, no matter how hard you've slaved over it, has a very short shelf life. News cycles are getting shorter and shorter, and while the demand for up-to-the-minute content is growing, this content has an extremely limited lifespan on the traditional news wires.
This is particularly true for photographers, who are trained to capture a moment that, within a few days (or even hours) may be used to (excuse the cynicism - journalists are a jaded bunch) to wrap up last night's vegetable peelings.
How to get more use out of work, outside of a news context is something many journalists are trying to figure out. For many, online offers the ideal platform to publish their work and make it last a little longer.
One of these journalists is Andrew Heavens. A photojournalist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Andrew works as a freelance photographer, shooting events and daily life in and around Ethiopia's capital. In his blog, Andrew explains that he used to sell his best images to agencies, and put the rest up on Flickr.
After speaking to Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices, Andrew changed the license on his Flickr page and his blog to a standard Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.
That's when things started happening.
'One of the most frustrating things about press photography is the short lifespan of your photographs,' says Andrew. 'You put yourself in a risky situation to record what you consider to be an important, newsworthy event. The resulting pictures flash up on newspaper pages, TV screens and Yahoo! news for a day or so. And then they disappear. The greatest thing that Creative Commons does is give you work an extra lease of life. After the news event has passed on, the photographs are still out there, waiting for someone else to pick up on them, give them a new meaning and use them in a different setting.'
Pictures and Protest
In May 2005 Ethiopians voted in what was supposed to be the country's first democratic elections. As the votes were counted, it appeared that the opposition party had taken Addis Ababa, while the government retained control over the country as a whole. Many Ethiopians felt that the results had been skewed and manipulated and, in June and November 2005, they took to the streets in protest. The government responded with force, and, by the end of 2005, nearly 200 Ethiopians (many of them students) were dead, and many more were missing.
As a photojournalist, Andrew shot the protests, violence and aftermath in the morgues of Addis Ababa. Some pics went to Reuters, where they were used, and soon sank out of site under the weight of global news. The pics on Andrew's Flickr feed, however, began to receive a great deal of attention, as Ethiopians (and others) around the world protested the government's response.
 'In Melbourne, a middle aged woman held up one of my photographs of a nurse, weeping in the corridor of Addis Ababa's Black Lion hospital, as she looked into the (out-of-shot) morgue, which held the bodies of seven dead teenagers.'
Images were printed and used on placards. Others were used as posters.
'In Washington DC, a young man held up a photo of five other young men in Addis Ababa waving their fists at a line of armed riot police.
In Rome, young women held up a montage of shots of mothers and sisters screaming with grief outside another city mortuary.'
Some of the images were used in a short film, which was uploaded onto YouTube and spread around the world.
'I am sure they would have got hold of some of the pictures with or without the Creative Commons license. (In fact photos from other photographers also appeared on the banners ' including a well-known one of a soldier beating a boy with his gun from AP.) But the way the Creative Commons license had opened up my Flickr account meant that the protesters had access to many of the shots in their original full resolution. Many of the photos were blown up to near life-size. Some of the images have, subsequently, been sold, and Andrew has changed their licenses accordingly. Others are still on his Flickr set, with CC licences.
More Than a Mashup
What the usage of Andrew's photos points to is the fact that remixing of culture is not just something that exists in the 'entertainment' domain. Many people perceive remixing as something that's fun, often funny, and generally quite irreverent. But powerful images can be used in many different ways, and as Andrew's experience shows, there is more to remixing than multimedia mashups.
It also highlights the importance of resources like Registered Commons, where creators can register their CC licensed works, as a means of authenticating them, and making explicit any moral rights restrictions.
While having his work used in such powerful settings means a great deal to Andrew, it does raise the issue of the complexities around ownership. 'There is no doubt it can still be scary and disturbing (imagine if a race hate group had picked up the pictures and used them to illustrate an article on black-on-black violence.) But at the very least it is a fascinating process to sit back and watch where your photos end up,' he says. At first, he admits, he also some vague concerns about the added usage his work was getting. 'I worried about what the Ethiopian Ministry of Information might think. I worried about what my freelance employers might think. For one brief selfish moment I also worried about my bank balance ' didn't I used to get paid when other people used my photographs?' But, he goes on, none of those worries were particularly focused, and now, a year later, those worries have faded, and he as, as he says, learnt to stop worrying, and love Creative Commons.
Free Culture, Free Food
Some of the other uses of his photos have been less politicised: 'People have written in checking to see if they can use them in textbooks, calendars, Ethiopian restaurant menus, novelty Amharic greeting cards. (How often do you get the chance to illustrate a line of novelty Amharic greeting cards?) Some of these contacts have resulted in further paid work. Some have resulted in the offer of free food if I am ever passing through New York and want to pop in to a certain Ethiopian restaurant. Others have resulted in nothing financial at all.'
Andrew told his story at a workshop for African bloggers during the annual Highway Africa conference earlier this year. For many, it represents a growing understanding of the seriousness of a free culture, a move beyond spoofs of Bush and Blaire, to a place where people can collaborate across borders and time. It reiterates the political nature of this journey and reminds us of the complexities of ownership and control.
As far as Andrew Heavens is concerned, he may never be a millionaire, but he will certainly be well fedâ?¦
Photographs:
Demonstrators in Addis Ababa, by Andrew Heavens, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Marchers in Chicago, by Kim Scarborough, CC BY-SA 2.0
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