In short, it doesn’t change anything in your business, but after you have produce your work and made money, why not let people use for free (if not commercially)?
Of course, sometimes, the nature of the photographic work will make it so you can’t share it, but most of the time people do not mind that a small res version of the image they paid for is available on the internet.

***

Also, the difference with a farmer giving away his food, a book downloaded is not a book you have “lost” and cannot sell. Eletronic copies are infinite. Where as carrots and potatoes aren’t. If they were, of course they should be available for free to everyone, don’t you agree?

Also, on the bit about free food, there has been “free” food in the past, many socialist countries provided their citizens with food and shelter for free for a price so cheap it was almost free. Why not socialize information then? Unlike physical good, information is infinite (you can reproduce it infinitely) and cannot fall prey to shortages.

But I’m getting off topic now…

You wrote:
“@Bonechips, I doubt most people would consider an on screen copy of a book as useful as having the “real deal” (IE: printed on paper), the people who would buy your book will still buy it, no matter if it’s on the internet for free or not. ”

Is that the same way that you actually buy the cd’s you download from Piratebay or go and rent the dvds, that you already watched?

If you can look up a recipe from a cooking book whenever you need it, why would you go and buy the book?

Surely your photography business is a hobby not an income to sustain yourself and your family. Having lots of people using your images in blogs I am sure is flattering, but an income it is not, and noone can live on flattery alone.

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. In fact you sound like an idiot.

I thought food was the life’s blood of civilization.
(Or was that water…. scratching head?)
Why not make the Farmer’s output free as well?
In the “age of information”, is not the creative product of an author a similar exchange of time and resources as that of a food producer?

There are no free lunches!
The gravity and inertia of a declining ROI will affect the model you suggest, bringing it down. Idealism is nice, but it lacks nutrition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFle2YoQwWg

You seem to be a big proponent of sharing information. I’m sure there are many here that would really appreciate your sharing the details of how you can making a good living with a *healthy* ROI with the model of business suggested in your photography business. Please share details – we know you aren’t a “dick”.

uh… because in the library model, the writer still gets paid. who exactly do you think are going to write all these “free” books?

Perhaps the same people who write the free software, and compose the free music that folks like to download off the Pirate Bay?

I do not totally agree with you (well, mostly not) but some of your arguments made me see the issue in another light.
I do agree that no one should make money out of someone else’s work without consent from said creator (however, free distribution is fair in my book), however, books are the lifeblood of civilization and their free circulation is essential. I hardly think their free diffusion on the internet would have a huge effect on the revenues they can bring in, I really doubt anyone would take a free “online” book over a real printed thing.

And the people that do, probably would not have bought said book in the first place anyways.

I don’t read Max Hodges as saying wikipedia would be impossible, just that he doesn’t want to rely on the generosity / spare time / vanity of a relative few. As you point out, Creative Commons licenses are there for anyone who wants to, and is able to be generous and make their work available under a number of different scenarios. If authors want to put their work in a special google database, they should be able to, but don’t take that decision away from them. Having an internet connection doesn’t entitle anyone to all the information in the world.

I’m just not sure why the idea of compensating someone for their creative work makes someone a dinosaur? I agree that there are new business models to be found that takes into account the reality of today’s electronic world, but doing away with copyright has far-reaching consequences (like no more CC licenses, or licenses at all for that matter).

The time of copyrights is coming to an end, this is the 21st century and an era of free flow of information. You’re a bunch of dinosaurs.

just kidding

It won’t be long before artists won’t bother producing anything of quality or historic anymore.

When you remove the financial incentive for authors and other publishers of digital contents, I think we all suffer for it. Why bother spending countless hours slaving to create a new work, when people might just download it and you’ll never see a cent from it? True, some people write books as a loss leader to promote their professional services, but do we want all digtal products to turn into marketing vehicles for in-product placement advertistments?

I run a small publishing company and I’ve authored and produced several works. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices in my life to create these titles. I’ve spent the last 6 years of my life and tens of thousands of my personal dollars to grow my small enterprise. I’m not very excited at all about Google or anyone else making my contents available online for free. It would be devastating to me , my staff, and the countless vendors and collaborators who make our products possible.

Don’t belive the contents are safe, because Google only makes a subset of the content available. What they are doing is only making a subset avaialble to a single user at a time, but i could write a software app in a few evenings which could search a single book on Google Book Search using multiple computers scatters around the global and quickly assemble the entire book.

I’ve sold books to tens of thousands of people in over 70 countries. Our customers are very loyal, and happy to pay a premium price for our products of the value we are providing to them. But if people start downloading digital copies of my work en mass, like we see people doing with movies and music, I’m going to need to shut down my company. But the real loss isn’t just my own job, the jobs of my staff and vendors, it’s the fact that tens of thousands of people are going to have to settle for inferior products.

If you’re some kind professional, be it a photographer, or a financial wizard, or a sound engineer, or language expert or whatever…you might have a book in you that tens of thousands (or millions) of people could benefit from. But if the financial incentive is eroded by the potential existence of FREE digital versions of your own product, readily available on the web…why even bother writing such a book in the first place? There are probably better ways to spend your time. The risk is just too great.

so that’s my bottom-line: I feel like we ALL suffer by being denied the fruits of others labors when we undermine their efforts by stripping away the potential for financial renumeration by pirating their works.

It’s wrong, but people are just too selfish. Most people would rather save themselves a few bucks whenever they can. Everyone I know who pirates software, music and movies says, “I’m not hurting their sales, because I wouldn’t have paid for it anyway.” or “I just don’t have the money for it” (even though they certain spend their money on OTHER things, like brand name clothes, beer, vacations, etc).

So this is the world we are creating: a place where information grows exponentially, but useful information grows only linearly and noise drowns out signal because crap is proliferating more and more everyday and no one is willing to pay for quality content anymore.

Bon weekend!

I was only pointing out the irony of someone telling me to go at the library using an incorrect sentence.
Also, saying that, because I forgot to capitalize an E in English, my position on the whole “free” books through google issue is invalid is a total logical fallacy. Learn to use logic.

My hypo assumes that no author in the future would ever expect to earn anything at all.

In other words, given the information/photos/novels, etc. that now exist, would the world be better off if all of that information was immediately accessible even if it meant removing the monetary incentive for future production?

I call this “not being a dick”.

Perhaps here is a question to consider: Would the world be better off if every book ever published was available for free on the web and no authors could ever expect to make a dime in the future?

It seems that it would be better for the 99.999% of the people in the world (who don’t write books for a living.)