Photos: Japan Disability Protest 2005.05.12 photoessay

Karen, Why did you choose to use such a restrictive license for your work? There are many other options, which allow people to use your work without getting written permission as long as they give you proper aknowledgement, don't use it for commercial purposes, and use the same license that you have chosen. Otherwise you are treating anyone who e-mails one of your pictures to a friend, or downloads one to their desktop, or posts a copy to their blog, as a criminal unless they go to the extraordinary step of contacting you first. Since you would presumably give permission for anything which fell within "fair use" you could easily provide a creative commons lincese which stated all this explicitly and has the full force of US copyright law behind it, but avoids the problems associated with restricting all use outright.

Kerim -

Good question. I want to protect my informants right to control how their image is used. The Creative Commons license protects against commercial re-use but not against non-commercial but still malicious re-use.

For example, there is nothing in the Creative Commons license that would prevent one of the photographs in my blog being used in another blog with a derogatory caption; or re-used in other non-commercial ways that would upset the people who I work with.

I prefer to err on the side of requiring re-use consent be given so that I can control how the images are used. If this blog were just photos of Minnesota mosquitoes (our state bird), it would be licensed differently.

Karen Nakamura

I see your point, although I do wonder about the practical and legal problems associated with attempts to micro-manage how work is used within the realm of what might be considered "fair use." Still, I see why you would want to try, especially given the subject matter of your photos.

Hi Karen,

Thanks for your documentary coverage of the protests by the disabled. It must be open season on the disabled internationally -- the Australian federal government is also curbing allowances for using the hours that can be worked by a disabled person as a basis for the calculation of the allowance: the more hours that the authorities consider the person capable of, the lower the allowance. I have heard the word "empowerment" used for processes like this.

(I work at the Royal Blind Society of New South Wales, so I'm working alongside some of the targets of this legislation)

regards - Ross (a fellow photographer)

Karen, I looked at your pictures of the disabled protesters because I was interested in your new lens. I forgot about the lens immediately. The individuals really jump out of the photographs: they look so strong, so determined and not at all victims.
I'm sure that is partly down to your empathy with them: Unlike the images that one sees in the press, you were not looking for cliched 'protest' pictures of shouting or chanting. As a result, the individuals' characters show through.

Mark

thanx for the dignifyingness of yr images
i wonder how their disability plan fits with the antinuclearbombcommemoration
to my esthetix, yr images are too neat, but that's personal, i like it tyrashier(divorcestyle:)
bless
dorian

Congratulations, Karen. I'm impressed by your work, as for its high photographic cality as for its humanity.
Excuse me by my bad english.
Saludos afectuosos from Spain