'Courtesy of' my cold thieving hands

What I'd like to know is ... who was the first person to post a picture on the Internet w/o asking the owner's permission and slap the words "Photo courtesy of" on it? Because somehow that's become accepted practice, and it's absolutely not courteous. Or fair.

Earlier this summer I started collecting the Internet policies of a bunch of big media companies (including big blog sites.) Oddly, I've yet to find one that's fair to all parties involved. Most don't even address whether/how to link to another website, let alone when it's OK to reuse an image or a chunk of text w/o seeking permission.

It's shocking how many people I've come across who do know it's wrong, but have decided it's a better business practice to publish now, and just take it down later if a cease-and-desist letter ever arrives.

I hope to compose my thoughts in a non jet-lag kinda way in the coming days. I'm hoping to write a best practices policy on this stuff -- mainly for NewYorkology, but it would be nice to see it adopted elsewhere. Hopefully it will help quash the evil "courtesy of" credit.

Labels: media

- posted by Amy @ 8/28/2008 08:51:00 AM