so you advocate the "charge what it is worth upfront business model"? Fine. The only problem I see is that with the capability to take their own photos that are "good enough" increasing all the time....I don't think your model will allow photographers to make enough money to make a living under your plan.
Perhaps you had noticed....the usage of professional...and I mean real professionals who have business expenses, taxes, insurance, studio overhead etc., is on the wane anyway...so you advocate a plan that raises the upfront costs to the consumer....in a market that sees fewer and fewer reasons to hire a pro....or one in which the pro loses the ability to make any money from after sales of his work by making all portraiture "work for hire" with which the photographer loses any ability to make any money from his work later.....so why not just say it...professional photography is dead, and might as well go away. Because that is what your plan would likely accomplish if it were adopted
I am sure it is true that for many....hiring a pro is out of reach financially for the product that they would be satisfied with and that in many cases they may be able to produce themselves with the technological advances in this field. The fact remains that there are those who might want to use the services of someone who actually does have the ability to deliver a better product than what they can personally produce....but...if your business model is adopted....anyone with real overhead expenses would be unable to sustain enough clients and income to sustain that professionalism and service......and the concept of full time professional photographers will die and go away.
For many...especially who visit this forum...talented in some cases amateurs, who have similar equipment and perhaps similar or even better skill sets than some pros, I can readily see that hiring a pro is of no interest to them. But for some of our society the rich, and the unskilled.....the option of having a pro available still serves a purpose...and the changes you propose would effectively remove that option from the table.
The current model was designed to encourage people to undertake creative jobs that do not have an instant financial reward and to create a middle class of artisans who would not be only full time employees of the very rich. If you look at painters and musicians from a few centuries ago...the only jobs available to them were if they had a patron who supported them ...and they basically worked FOR that person.
By granting the right to reproduction of one's work for additional profit over and above the piece that might have been created for a patron....it allowed the general public to have access to the works of artists and musicians without them being indentured to a single rich individual....it gave the artist the freedom to actually earn a living at that art, and at the same time, it opened up the access to the artist to the general public at large.
In the absence of a feudal society wherein all the townspeople owe their existence and well being to the feudal lord, this allowed the development of the middle class that is the backbone of our society today and is the reason we have the freedoms we do. Your proposal basically reverses that progress and would result in killing this profession and if extended to similar fields might kill them as well. The reason copyright exists is to allow those artisans the ability to earn a living without relying upon a single rich patron.
Richard Katris aka Chanan
