Andy Chase

Like others on Flickr, I got a message this morning from a service called Schmap - a downloadable city guidebook sort of a thing. Apparently 8 of my greater Los Angeles photos (including the one above) had been 'short-listed' for inclusion in their upcoming guide.

That all seemed very interesting (and admittedly flattering,) but I was puzzled as to why my photos had been selected in the first place; I post my photos to Flickr under the Creative Commons "Attribution, Non-commercial, Share-Alike" license. As far as I can tell, Schmap's use of my photos would be decidedly commercial.

The point has been argued that it's not *really* commercial if Schmap makes its guides freely downloadable and strictly ad-supported, but Adam Fields makes the more important point that Schmap is being quite proprietary about their own content, and that is counter to the entire spirit of Creative Commons licensing.

Tagged:

• flickr
• creativecommons
• photography