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Free Hits A New Low

I ran across a comment in one of this weeks' blog posts (the comment has since been deleted), promoting free in a way that is a new low.

It's one thing to argue about working for free for a charitable organization, or to say "hey, I can't get the images in my portfolio unless I trade work for access...", or some other notion that I've taken issue with. We can debate those issues on and on.

Yet, when a "fellow photographer" who "understand(s) the frustration in obtaining high-priced photography DVDs online" decides he is going to give them away for free, that reaches a new low.

Much like the MP3 mentality - "I made the effort to buy these original DVDs and took time to upload them. All I am asking is a minimal fee to cover my costs", but in this case, to use movie-industry parlance, he is charging what is called a "distribution fee", for the efforts in duplicating and uploading the content.

The blog (which, if it isn't deleted by now, will likely be soon), has as a sub-title "Learn from the Gurus of Photography. Learn from the Best".

On the blog, he lists "free" DVD's from the likes of Gary Fong, Mike Colon, Gino Lucadamo, Jerry Ghionis, Dean Collins, Joe Buissink, Bambi Cantrell, Doug Gordon, Ryan Schembri, Kevin Kubota, Yervent, Tommy Colbert, Mary Du Prie, Guy Gowan, Zack Arias, and many others.

Further, this "fellow photographer" has posted this same list on many other blogs that I found. And, likely when this blog gets deleted by Google because it violates their terms of service (i.e. the infringing of Copyright is a Google TOS violation) you can bet that other resources will pop up because people have a perverted belief that these DVDs should be free.

Sources have informed me that the person in question is allegedly one David Tran, from Malaysia, and, as such, is essentially untouchable from the US, and since Malaysia thrives, as many have said, on piracy, he will continue, as he has done for some time now, as this posting is a repeat performance for him. Interestingly, going to the services that he uses - if you want to download something, unless you're willing to pay $14.99 for two months of "premium" download access, the free download access gives you a 24k/sec download speed - worse than a dialup modem.

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