Remember that a month ago image sharing platform 500px announced that they will shut their marketplace down? A closer look at the announcement by Redditor Ricky_Lee_Hasselhoff reveals that 500px are also killing their Creative Commons licensing option.
If you are unfamiliar with Creative Commons, you can read about it here, but in a nutshell, it’s a licensing scheme that allows others to use your photos without monetary compensation. Here is the nice thing about creative commons: it allows putting restrictions on usage. Things like an obligation to credit the artist or restricting from commercial use. Basically Creative Commons is a licensing platform that encourages sharing.
But starting today, 500px are shutting down their Creative Commons section.
There is a short blog post on 500px blog that highlights the closure of the 500px marketplace and the great collaboration 500px will have with Getty Images (a stock image agency) and VCG (a Chinese stock agency). If you look closer at the FAQ for the change you will find this:
How does this affect Creative Commons users and photographers?
All direct licensing features (pricing, shopping cart, comp downloads, etc..) will be removed from the platform, including the ability for contributors to choose a Creative Commons license during the photo upload process. We’ll also remove the ability for users to download photos with a Creative Commons license.
Is 500px providing a migration path for existing contributors who submit Creative Commons images?
The short answer is no. Our plan is to remove the ability to upload an image to 500px with a Creative Commons license. We’ll also be removing the functionality to download and search for Creative Commons images on our website.
If I read things correctly, 500px are taking a step away from being a community platform and a step towards being a stock agency.
P.S. here is a short intro to Creative Commons
