that is true (ignorance), but not really an excuse and they wouldn't feel the same if it were their work. I'd be curious of how many of those you explained the law to then followed it, and how many continued to "be ignorant of it" ?
The article does push the cost angle to a silly extent, but then recognises it partially.
If the same logic was used for the restaurant, if the kitchen the Chef prepared the meal in cost 100K (i'll ignore currency), or even just 20K for the cooker, utensils etc, would you expect to pay that for the meal ?
Using depreciation of assets is a reasonable cost model (not pricing model), using brand new equipment as a one-off calculation is not. You could use second hand variants of all the camera kit and still take the same picture would be a valid counter-argument. Or as most people do, value a picture on what is typical price for the market in your location, much the same as every industry does. But I digress....
I seem to recall Adobe once taking a view that people copying Photoshop, installing it, and then only using it to "crop a photo and use auto-levels, auto expose", would likekly never justify buying the product and so were never their target for piracy. It was the person copying it and selling it, or paying for 1 license but using it everywhere in their office.
I guess the photographic equivalent is someone profiting from your work. A school kid using your picture in their homework perhaps not really something you want to get riled over.
<rant on>
Charities make my blood boil - as mentioned, what they pay some of their staff and yet they try and play the conscious card to get you to do things for free, or donate for fre - hmmmm. I get the need to try and get money for the charity, and the clever people might find cunning ways to extract more. I get the fact that to invest and use the money wisely needs talented people (who arent free). The fact (in the UK), that they only have to spend 20% of their donations on the actual charity and have no obligation to report what they actually get in donations and how they spend it, is just bang out of order and the lack of transparency dupes the public into giving more than I'm sure they would if they knew the truth.
<rant off> & apologies to all
Any other person or organisation who uses your image for profit, yet wants it for free - unacceptable behaviour.
