Have you ever grabbed a photograph off the Internet for an assignment? I’ll bet most students have done this at some point. But how many actually think about whether or not they have the right to use that image? It may not seem important, but what if that photo is being published in a newspaper, magazine, or blog? The person who created the image needs to be compensated. The same can be said for other creative works like videos, illustrations, music, and more. The problem is that individual creators don’t want to spend their time selling their work and protecting their copyrights–they want to keep putting out more quality work. That’s why companies like Seattle, WA based Corbis exist. They buy and sell the rights for creative intellectual property. They have a massive catalog, so if you needed an image of fly fisherman with a mountain in the background at sunset, they have what you need. In other words they bring efficiency to a market that would otherwise be extremely fragmented and inefficient.
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to force myself to read more books, and half of the reading that I do on it is stuff that I sent to it from the web. However, books are still huge business, and the major brands in the book publishing business still seem to be surviving, if not thriving, in a forever changed book selling environment. Simon & Schuster is a great example (and if you’re looking for other 
