Stealing citizen content

I am sitting in my hotel room in Seattle researching all the sites that used my photographs from yesterday’s Microsoft announcement in violation of my Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial license. I broke a story with high-resolution photographs and commercial websites decided not only to use my content without attribution but in one case a site was selling prints of my photographs.

Breaking news is very competitive and everyone wants the scoop in their search for full and in-depth coverage. Unlike a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge or something artsy I feel like these sites already have benefitted from my work and I don’t really think anyone is buying a 4×6 print of Dean Hachamovitch. I have heard a few suggestions that I should watermark my photographs to prevent this from happening but I think that just results in ugly images and I want to share content I hope is enjoyed by others.

I know this same problem happens every day to content producers across the web and I just wanted to share my personal frustration of having it happen to me to the benefit of large content producers.