I have an uneasy relationship with the concept of ‘intellectual property’. On the one hand, I am firmly convinced that all human knowledge is, and must be, considered as belonging to the commons, for to deny a person knowledge is to deny their very humanity. But on the other hand, as an occasional ‘creator’ / photographer, I understand the urge to lay some claim to my own work, and I get where the concepts of ‘copyright’ and ‘patent’ are coming from and what their original intents might have been. However.

There is little doubt in my mind the workings of ‘intellectual property’ in our world are broken beyond repair. Whatever the original intents, copyright claims and patents have become instruments of control, subjugation, and ultimately of oppression of the worst kind (e.g., consider the needless suffering and deaths caused by Big Pharma peddling cheap chemical compounds for extortionate amounts of money).

So how did we get here? The heart of the problem is that the need for defending ‘intellectual property’ arises entirely out of a social structure where absolutely everything is about making money. If you take that away, then the need goes away with it, it’s really that simple.

Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in, and while I might dream of a better one, it is what it is; the need for asserting ‘intellectual property’ remains for both the commercial and non commercial ‘creator’. And so even our most inane photographs are covered by copyright and we apply things like the GNU licenses to software, trying to game the system on its own terms.

But while I might have mixed feelings about copyright and patents, and have no great interest in making money from my own limited creative work (I have a day job, and not everything in life has to be about money), I believe very firmly in attribution, in giving credit where it’s due.

Yesterday, while going through my RSS feeds, I stumbled on a post from one of the biggest UK outdoor influencers that caught my eye, for I immediately recognised the very distinct cover image. A photo from a book, the Rough-Stuff Fellowship Archives. And not a peep about what the image was and where it came from. That is poor, very poor coming from a professional creator.

Anyway, the Rough Stuff Fellowship books are well worth owning, particularly if you are a younger person into mountain biking or gravel riding, for a bit of historical perspective. And many of the photographs in there are of a very high standard, as well, far beyond today’s selfies.

(Other than that, I can offer you a free ebook of a different kind. 🙂)