Licensing Natural Images
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Sometimes it is hard to get a good picture of how much value humans get from having animals and their habitats exist. One idea that might make this more clear would be to charge for the use of their images. That is, in the same way that it costs a company or organization money to use the likeness of a celebrity on their products, it would cost them money to use the likeness of a fox, or eagle, or valley, or mountain.
Of course the hard part is figuring out who would administer these licenses, but a revenue-maximizing monopoly would be a decent way to start (same as with a celebrity). Such a venture would then be obligated to use some large fraction of the revenues on conservation efforts. Or it could be structured as an agent contract. That would make it easy to figure out if the agency price was fair: compare to what human celebrities can negotiate with their agents.
¶ 9:08 AM
