At what point should art be free, and when can artists rightfully demand payment for their work?
 I’ve been thinking about the recent posts from Thomas Hawk and Robert Scoble about the unauthorized use of digital imagery. The story is this: Lane Hartwell has decided to remove all of her public works from Flickr and other sites because some of her images, in her words, “have been stolen and used in ways that (she) is not comfortable withâ€. Scoble and Hawk seem to think that in the free spirit of the Internet no one should “give a shit†whether their work is taken and repurposed. Hawk believes such concerns about who digital ownership and rights are petty, and that artists should be excited that people want to use their work at all, an attitude that sounds an awful lot like “Thievery is the sincerest form of flattery.†Scoble says that he’s just honored that he’s “add(ing) to the human experience†and plans to license more of his work under a Creative Commons license so that people can use it whenever and wherever they please.
Part of me wonders whether Scoble and Hawk can afford to be so cavalier about this because photography isn’t their bread and butter. We know Thomas Hawk’s an alter ego for someone who has a lucrative career in the financial industry. While Scoble he says he has had photos published in other places, I don’t think he considers photography as his main source of income, or that it’s even his primary creative outlet (I could be completely wrong about this as I don’t know the man). Despite this, the idea that just because something is online that it becomes fair game is a strange one to me. If people truly value your work, they should be willing to pay a dollar value (or award proper attribution, if that’s your bag) in order to support your vision. Stealing work is cowardly, and while I wouldn’t go as far as calling people scumbags, I don’t see what is so difficult about asking an artist whether they’d be willing to contribute work for free/in exchange for credit/for a smaller fee than usual. All the artist can do is say no, but at least you’ve given them the right of first refusal. All it means for the person who wants to use the original work is that they have to knock on a different door – or several doors – until they reach someone who is willing to contribute.
Where’s this sense of entitlement coming from? What drives it?
And then there’s also the not-so-understated sexism that rears its ugly head in some of the comments leveled toward Lane Hartwell in the first place. The people who used her work without permission are called “impoliteâ€, but the (female) artist who stands up for her work is called “a whiny bitchâ€, petty, and “bitchyâ€. Class act that, fellas.