A Swiss man with a terrace overlooking the airport in Samui, Thailand, appears to have been the first person to put photos of the Koh Samui crash in early August online, reports Andy, editor of the Bangkok Bugle, a blog on Thailand and the media there. Within 20 minutes of the crash, the man had posted them on a forum and from there they zoomed to Twitter and from there – the world, mostly with no credit to him. There was an intermediate stop, however: when he posted them on the forum he also sent them off to Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, which did the decent thing and credited him and asked for more photos (here’s a link – forgive us for not showing the image here :–). But the rest of the world didn’t bother too much about the credit or copyright, it seems. He never gave up the copyright – as the author, it’s always yours but conditions of use need discussion – but it sounds like it ran away from him and once gone, you can’t easily get it back.

The post on the Bangkok Bugle raises a lot of issues that need more discussion: how do citizen journalists protect their copyright, how much do citizen journalists know and understand of media laws, how much do media laws in most countries reflect aging dinosaur mainstream media rather than today’s world, and more. Tages-Anzeiger could have done a few things to protect his work, such as embedding his copyright information in the image code, making sure they didn’t run it too large online, and then tracking anyone who ran the image. The last is the most important bit, but the number of media organizations with those kinds of resources is pretty rare.

Twitter and Facebook are the real gray area for most people, individuals and media producers alike. There is a lot of discussion out there about using photos from them, but one of the tricky bits is the right of media people to call on the notion of “fair use” and just use them for news. Ok, but then who is the media, legally speaking? Are aggregators and sites that copy news true news sites? Are legitimate journalists working alone news sites? If you put together a chatty online newsletter for the 10 houses on your street, does that make you an editor? The questions are endless.

One small but common misperception needs airing, too: the idea that information from citizen journalists is often worth serious money. Let’s be realistic – media companies just about everywhere are in far worse financial condition than they say publicly, they barely pay their journalists, they have next to nothing left for freelancers. Time Magazine this week has four ads. Four. Even if they cost a fortune by most people’s standards, that won’t pay the rent, never mind salaries.

But what about those once in a great while photos worth millions, sold to The Sun or Fox?

Buy a lottery ticket; your chances are better.

For the record, I liked the photographer’s attitude, as quoted by Andy. His main concern was to inform people. Now that’s an attitude worth a fortune!

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