Island in the Net by Khürt Williams
Technology and Photography Musings. Established circa 2000.
Because “Free” appears to only mean the following things:- Free for commercial exploitation Free for monetisation Free for corporations to take the labour of the commons and profit. Free for corporations to use in their deals with military and intelligence services.
I’m relicencing my stuff un...
What does this mean for people who may be using your work under a previous license?
Ben Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)European directives leave it up to the member states to implement. The resulting legislation in the Netherlands will necessarily look different to Germany, and so on. While each of these nations could expand upon the directive and make it even more far-reaching, it's fair to assume that it will probably be retained.
All of which means that peer-to-peer decentralized social networks are exempt, if you're hosting your profile yourself. Nobody on the indie web is going to need to implement upload filters. Similarly, nobody on the federated social web, or using decentralized apps, will either. In these architectures, there are no service providers that store or provide access to large amounts of work. It's in the ether, being hosted from individual servers, which could sit in datacenters or could sit in your living room.
While the internet economy has been dominated by services that leverage network effects to date, this directive is one way that monolithic networks have changed from an asset into a liability. Because the cumulative value in a network is owned by a single party, that party becomes subject to enormous rules and regulations over time. The network effects are enjoyed by everyone, but owned by one company. Instead, it's better to create a system where the network effects are both enjoyed and owned by everyone.
I stopped directly uploading my content to Facebook and Google some time ago. I have never uploaded original content to YouTube.
So what now?
No matter what networks you share your work to – having your own website and making it the center of your activity is a good idea. It is only on your own website that you can truly control your content. Buy a domain name if you don’t already have one. I host mine with Dreamhost.com, though there are a lot of other great hosts out there. Research them before you sign up – and get the level of hosting you require. I also host my Image Library on a site called Photoshelter. If you just have a few photos online at this point you could start with a some basic WordPress galleries and get some experience with that platform.
Good luck!
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I deleted my account and sent a request to 500px to delete my images from all servers under their control. Fingers crossed.
Keeping my images on my website may be the only way I can keep some control of my copyrighted content. Now what about Instagram?
