[filmscanners] Re: Disabling right-click, etc. (was: Web home page writing software)

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

> It has to be said that most were from school
> children using the images for their homework!

A majority of the requests for permission that I get on my site are from
schoolkids; analysis of my logs indicates that they probably represent only
a minority of visitors, but they seem to be more honest, or someone else is
compelling them to be more honest (by insisting that they get permission for
photos used, or whatever).  Unfortunately that doesn't bring in any money (I
routinely grant permission for free to students, unless they are preparing
something for publication), but it's nice to know that at least someone is
following the rules.

Others often ask for permission and expect it for free; I usually meet that
expectation if it is non-profit and non-commercial, but I'm surprised when
people running Web sites for profit or thick with advertising expect me to
give my images away for free.  Sorry, but "exposure" on their little sites
does not pay my bills, and with up to 200,000 visitors a month on my own
site, exposure is already not bad.  Worse yet are corporate customers who
obviously do have substantial budgets and nevertheless want everything for
free; today I just turn them down if they can't pony up with the cash.

There are probably a lot of people stealing my images, including things like
porn sites (one such incident having been pointed out to me), although I'm
not sure why a porn site would be interested in pictures of Paris.  There
are probably countless personal and business Web sites using my images
without permission.  My only consolation is that the images on the site are
still only pale shadows of the original scans, although they are vastly
better than the junk that a lot of other people put on their sites (I don't
believe in blurry, postage-stamp sized images).

On rare occasions, I actually license images at a fair price to honest
clients through the site.  That is always a pleasant surprise.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe by mail to listserver@halftone.co.uk, with 'unsubscribe 
filmscanners'
or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or 
body