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Commercial or Journalistic? You Tell Me

In the final episode of the Toronto Life Creative Commons drama, we have identified the issue to be a difference of opinion about what constitutes “Commercial Use”.

After I sent in my letter to Toronto Life, I got a quick, respectful and reasoned response from Matthew Fox, Editor of TorontoLife.com.

We have resolved the usage issue by TorontoLife.com including a link to CheapEatsToronto.com where they use any of my images (and they have already implemented this.)

Matthew's reply to my letter stated that TorontoLife.com believes the use of the images was journalistic and not directly commercial, and thus did not cause a conflict with the Creative Commons license.  But I’ll let you read it yourself, since with Matthew’s permission, I’m including his response to my letter in entirety and a bit of our back-and-forth around this issue:  [Click to keep reading]

Letter to Toronto Life

As many of you have voiced your support on my Creative Commons issue with Toronto Life, I thought I’d share the letter I sent them about their use of my photos without permission.  [original post about that is here]

 

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Hi,

I'm writing because 2 of my photos are being used without my permission on your Daily Dish section. Both photos have a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en_CA) which states explicitly that my photos are available for non-commercial use only.

I also state, explicitly, in my Flickr profile "If you want to buy any of my photos for commercial use, please email me to discuss it." Toronto Life, and by extension your online properties which all have paid advertising, is commercial are not covered the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical License.

The photos in question are used in these 2 articles:

• The new patios of summer ’09: Fresh grazing grounds for outdoorsy appetites - http://mail2web.com/cgi-bin/redir.asp?lid=0&newsite=http://www.torontolife.com/daily/daily-dish/restauranto/2009/05/11/the-new-patios-of-summer-%E2%80%9909-fresh-grazing-grounds-for-outdoorsy-appetites/
• Cluck, Grunt and Low silenced: The carnivore’s paradise closes rather abruptly - http://www.torontolife.com/daily/daily-dish/deathwatch/2009/05/01/cluck-grunt-and-low-silenced-the-carnivore%e2%80%99s-paradise-will-close-abruptly-tonight/

I am very open to people using my photos on non-commercial sites, and I'm also open to commercial sites and publications using them WITH PERMISSION through purchased non-exclusive rights for which I generally charge $100 per image.

So, I would like you to:

1. add a link to my publication for which they were taken: www.cheapeatstoronto.com in the accreditation AND send me a contact so I can invoice you for use of the images at $100/image

OR

2. remove the images from your posts and post an apology or post something indicating that you will only use photos from Flickr that are for Commercial-use from this point forward.

Here is a bit more on my reaction to seeing my images used without
permission - http://www.unsweetened.ca/unsweetened/2009/05/non-means-non.html

Alexa Clark
editor, publisher & founder
CheapEats Toronto

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Attribution-NonCommercial License

"Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright." creativecommons.org

A Little Palm Pre-view

Last week, I was invited to a preview of the new Palm Pre by Jenn Evans of Sequentia Environics.

I tweeted about it, big surprise, and got deluged by questions and requests to talk about my experience.

I didn’t realize until I started talking about it that so many of the other previews and demos were hands-off.

We did get to play with the Palm Pre, not enough for my tastes but of course my tastes lean towards someone handing me a phone and me going off into a corner to play with it for a week. And then getting to keep it (not so subtle hint repeated below).

The folks at PreThinking.com asked if I’d do a Q&A about my experience with the Pre, so here is more about my experience with the Pre in the interview I did for PreThinking.com:

Palm Pre Final Models In-depth Impressions from Canada

The most recently leaked release date I’ve seen is June 5th for the US, but it won’t be here until the second half of 2009. 

And in case someone from Palm is reading this, I would LOVE to road test the Pre in Canada for you. Call me. [insert hand gesture here]

Non Means Non

Today I got the following Google alert telling me one of my photos had been used and accredited to me.

Google Web Alert for: lexnger

The new patios of summer '09: Fresh grazing grounds for outdoorsy ...
May 11, 2009 ... The new leisure class: Queen Street will benefit from some of the city's new patios (Photo by LexnGer). With spring heating up into summer, ...

Normally this is very exciting news and I'm delighted to see my photos used.

This time however I was a little surprised and more than a little annoyed.

My photo is used in a Toronto Life article by Davida Aronovitch in their online Daily Dish section. Toronto Life is a commercial enterprise and my Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial license states explicitly that my photos are available for non-commercial use only.

In fact, Toronto Life is one of the primary reasons I have a non-commerical license on my photos. They are a direct competitor to CheapEats Toronto since they publish a guide to cheap restaurants every year. If my photos are going to be used to promote a Toronto restaurant guide, it should be ours!   [update – I am the founder, editor & publisher of CheapEats Toronto for those of you who are visiting for the first time]

Truth is if Davida, or whoever added the photo to the article, had asked me I would probably have said “okay” because it's not really a big deal. But they didn't.

So I’m going to ask for them to either remove the photo or add a link to CheapEats Toronto.

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(May 12 update) A friend just pointed out that Toronto Life is also using my photo on their article on Cluck, Grunt & Low