Remember that a month ago image sharing platform 500px announced that they will shut their marketplace down? A closer look at the announcement by Redditor Ricky_Lee_Hasselhoff reveals that 500px are also killing their Creative Commons licensing option. If you are unfamiliar with Creative Commons, you can read about it here, but in a nutshell, it’s a licensing scheme that allows others to use your photos without monetary compensation. Here is the nice thing about creative commons: it allows putting restrictions on usage. Things like an obligation to credit the artist or restricting from commercial use. Basically Creative Commons is a licensing platform that encourages sharing.
But starting today, 500px are shutting down their Creative Commons section.
If I read things correctly, 500px are taking a step away from being a community platform and a step towards being a stock agency. All direct licensing features (pricing, shopping cart, comp downloads, etc..) will be removed from the platform, including the ability for contributors to choose a Creative Commons license during the photo upload process. We’ll also remove the ability for users to download photos with a Creative Commons license. Is 500px providing a migration path for existing contributors who submit Creative Commons images? The short answer is no. Our plan is to remove the ability to upload an image to 500px with a Creative Commons license. We’ll also be removing the functionality to download and search for Creative Commons images on our website. P.S. here is a short intro to Creative Commons
