It&#x27;s interesting that there is a backlash brewing against Skidmore from the pro photog community. Giving away his work for free seems similar to the way bloggers pour countless hours into creating content for their sites. People don&#x27;t expect to pay to read your blog post, but of course they should expect to pay you if they need custom content made for them. Competition is fierce, and I&#x27;d be surprised if this type of thing isn&#x27;t happening in every content-creation industry. I can actually think of an example relevant to HN: the ubiquity of free, open source software.