the backyard of my mind

I was contacted recently by someone claiming to be a sales manager for “WRSP Events” asking to use this photo:

On 12 Feb 13, 3.53PM EST WRSP Events said:

Otherwise, do send me information on how much you would charge for a download of this image (un-watermarked)

My reply:

Watermarks do not pay my mortgage.
Watermarks do not pay for my groceries.
Watermarks do not pay my medical bills.
Watermarks do not pay for my van payments.
Watermarks do not pay for Christmas presents for my grandchildren.
Watermarks do not pay for my 40 years of experience.
Watermarks do not pay for my camera gear.

Exposure? I have over 1 million views on my Flickr account. I’ve sold many photos to reputable businesses. I don’t need free publicity.

For a business as big as yours, asking for free photography is simply stupid and greedy. Don’t think I or anyone else with access to Google doesn’t know Live Nation is Ticketmaster? I can download your 10K and see over a billion dollars in revenues for over 3 years running!

And yet you seem to think you are entitled to poach on working photographer’s output for free. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? How greedy? How tone-deaf?

I’ll be posting this letter and my response on my blog and on Facebook. I’d prefer any further interactions be in public.

-End Quote-

WRSP Events is part of Live Nation. Which owns Ticketmaster. Which has revenues of over a billion dollars a year. Greedy? It’s absolutely astounding!

What would the Gettysburg Address be like, if given in 2011, and to the same level of honesty that Lincoln was used to?

“One Score and ten years ago Ronald Reagan transformed on this continent a new Order, conceived in Privilege and dedicated to the proposition that all real men are created wealthy. Now we are engaged in a great class struggle, testing whether that Order or any Order so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that Order might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, poor and lower-class who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the privileged rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored peons we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this Order under God shall have a new birth of riches, and that government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy shall not perish from the earth.”

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it.
The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, ‘Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.’

I urge everyone to read this post over at Boing Boing. This person’s ignorant attacks and racist panderings are a cancer on the body politic.

If you are reading this, this is why you aren’t doing so well. Republicans and the rich are screwing you… Are you feeling loved yet?