Dear Asshole Friend,

You’re probably wondering why I haven’t responded back to your emails asking me to call off my lawyers. You are, after all, just a well-intentioned corporation doing your best to help out me–the little guy, the starving artist.

I understand that photo licensing can get pretty expensive and may not fall within everyone’s budget. Certainly, with your company selling only $10,000,000 in product a year, how could you afford to pay the $275 my agency and I ask for to use one of my images. And you needed four of them! Gasp! I see why you thought it would be better just to take them from my website and use them without asking. The point of you even putting my photos up on your for-profit commerce site was “only to promote” me anyways, surely you wouldn’t be making any money off my work. Nah, no way. All those product links and advertisements to your own inventory were totally just on there for funsies. Your numbers speak for themselves, no one’s buying that stuff…[Read More…]