I have a friend who is a professional photographer, and found her work being used in what she felt was a commercial context. She feels she has a responsibility to the people she has photographed not to use their image in certain ways, and it is part of the trust she has with her clients. She tried to privately handle the issue, and was given a few assurances, but nothing happened. She ended up having to assert her rights and have content removed. Since the re-use of her work was part of a popular project there was some outcry when it disappeared. The people who took her work were happy to publicly portray her as a villain and misrepresent what conversations took place privately (and also claimed some sort of fair-use non-profit status, even though their project was clearly designed to promote sales of a product).

In the end, she got a headache and a bit of a unwanted notariety in the tech community (which is where many of her clients work). Not taking other people’s things without permission should be a no-brainer, but you also have people who purposely do it, and think it is ok (even if the creator thinks it is not). Some people told my friend that she should give away her work to make herself more famous. But, you know, she’s gotta eat, and fame isn’t very filling. It’s not like she is living high on the hog for being “greedy.”