http://www.lightstalkers.org/posts/the_news_is_now_public___citizen_journalism An entire Lightstalkers thread via RSS/XML. en-us Have any of you ever heard of this site? It boasts 30,000 contributors in 130 countries. Refers to citizen journalism. I guess a better question is has anyone contributed to this and what experiences have you had with it? http://www.nowpublic.com Wed, 14 May 2008 22:27:31 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/posts/the_news_is_now_public___citizen_journalism I just received a request to use one of photos I have posted on Flickr. Like most request from Flickr, the compensation they offer is the "exposure," or whatever. The scary part is in the fine print of using the site. I'm no lawyer but it looked like just signing up to use the site, anything that you contribute becomes "creative commons" and any and all of their licensees can use and "exploit" the image. Yes, it actually says exploit. The other thing that concerned me is that it while the site claims to be this grass roots, community organized site, it remains a ".com," which means somebody is probably turning a profit on all the free content that is provided. At any rate, it sounded pretty sketchy to me and so I didn't go through with it. I don't mind licensing an image for a not for profit, or a charity organization but nowpublic.com seemed more like a for profit org trying to appear like a not for profit. I'd be interested to see if anyone else has had another experience with it. Wed, 14 May 2008 14:47:26 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/posts/the_news_is_now_public___citizen_journalism#121341 its a vancouver based company, which is a pretty trustifarian creative commons place. you can upload stuff as copyrighted but by default it wants it to be creative commons, it currently is not out for profit but has received ~$10 million in funding from venture capitalists so they obviously think there is money in it somewhere and it seems will only be a matter of time before they start to generate income from user generated content. i have had several requests for photos on different occasions but always decline. Wed, 14 May 2008 16:34:26 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/posts/the_news_is_now_public___citizen_journalism#121353 Yeah, I keep getting requests for specific images as well. Replied to the first one by asking if they are "for profit" and someone replied back saying yes, they were for profit and sell advertising and no, they don't pay to license images. I replied to subsequent requests with price quotes. Move on. Wed, 14 May 2008 22:27:31 +0000 http://www.lightstalkers.org/posts/the_news_is_now_public___citizen_journalism#121371