Reason for Using Non-Commercial CC Licenses

Outside the Cimitero Monumentale
Originally uploaded by dam.

My Flickr photos are all licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning that you can use, modify, and sell them as long as you give me credit. I've never been a big fan of the popular non-commercial clause, because it seems to cover a large and unclear spectrum of activity. The GNU Public License (GPL) for example, does not prohibit commercial uses.

Today, I received a nice email from Schmap, a company making free ("no-cost"), downloadable travel guides. They include CC-licensed photos in their guides, and choose this picture of mine for the Milan one. (Sadly, I can't view it, since their player is currently Windows-only, but it seems interesting.) My suspicion is that this would count as commercial usage of my photo, since Schmap seems to be a for-profit company that includes a store on its website. I'm much happier to have people seeing my photo (and knowing I took it), then leaving it locked away under a non-commercial license.