For instance; I consider to myself to be rather smart, yet I have no interest in cars. If you gave me the challenge of rebuilding the motor of a volkswagen I wouldn’t really be having the time of my life, in fact I would probably loathe the project.

In short, we should challenge the individual, but the individual should enjoy the project as well.

It brings up a good point, that when linking to something, make it the first thing. I am tempted that for links, just to make them a line by themselves in the post and any short thoughts that I have will be put underneath it.

I like it the way it is now – it works and is familiar to everyone.

The attitude he had in his response to you would have me fuming. I am not sure of the legalities of seeking fair compensation for their use of your photograph, individually anyway. Suing is obviously too expensive to really justify. It would be incredibly expensive and time consuming.

BUT, as you mentioned if they have 50,000 photographs on their site how many did they use without first asking permission? (I’m guessing most of them) And how many of those photographers even know about it? Even if credit was given, a lot of people aren’t in the habit of Googling themselves or their website names. It would be very interesting to contact a few photographers and see if they feel the same way you do.

If they do… it may be a candidate for a class action lawsuit. If you figure one image used commercially is worth about $100 (average between a $10 iStock image and $500 Getty image) then that’s a potential liability of $5,000,000 (not including attorney fees, time awarded to defendants due to the time required to bring the case, etc). I’m no attorney but if I were CultureMap I’d sure be consulting one… because that much copyright infringement could prove costly one day.