This whole debacle is a return to artists starving in their garrets! There is ZERO point in being well known if you are dying of starvation. The irony here is that there are millions of photographers, artists and writers out there who are NOT full time, who have other incomes which allow them to play with their creativity. For them vanity publishing is just great, having their image or poem or words seen by millions of people is all that matters, a huge massage of their egos.

For those who are living a LIFE of being a creative i.e., eating it, breathing it, going to sleep thinking about it and even dying immersed in it, their sole income is often a direct result of the sale of the intellectual property within their art. Even if they have tagged their work as their own, so no Orphan Works devil can use their work, WHO is going to see their work and then think about paying you for it when they already have free access? Even if they choose to commission you to create new work, how much is ANYONE paying these days for truly creative work? Certainly not enough to earn a living by. Patronage whereby an artist can actually earn a living as an artist was ALWAYS important and is now as much as ever. We may no longer have ‘patrons’ as such but we have clients or customers. The moment those customers can go and download an artists images or words for nothing, in the name of ‘education’ or ‘sharing of information’ is the moment that many of those who produce the desired works, will have to stop producing what is loved in the first place.

Like any relationship, one person cannot simply provide food whilst the other eats it or the provider will die. Both have to put food ON the plate so that both can share and survive.

I met Francoise (Fifi) for the first time in Laos (with her gibbon and Yves Billy)in 1974 and then in Pnom Pen when she was not yet a photographer. Several of us pooled resources (a Nikkormat on my part) to help her start. Small world

Thank you for your article on copyright

Pierre (in Dhaka)