Large Educational Technology Organizations: Why Not Use Open Licensed Media?

Perhaps it’s just me, but I would hope that leadership organizations in our field might model best practices in promoting open content, reuse.

I’ve noticed for a while that EDUCAUSE’s online publications, like 5 Tips for Moving from Remote Instruction to Quality Online Learning feature copyrighted media from Shutterstock:

And just noticed in a JISC web feature on their new podcast series that their media is copyrighted ones from Getty.

I have no insight to their publication process or demands, but I can certainly be sure there is a wealth of open licensed imagery that provide a similar visual message.

It just seems like leadership organizations, who have the funds to pay for copyrighted images, could model a different behavior. What does this practice say to others?

Or is this just me?

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Yup - sounds like internal lack of communication. It’s up to folks like us, outside organisations like this, to let them know that we’re noticing this stuff… to help them open up the internal paper-walls that betray their otherwise positive principles.

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It probably has to do with not spending time on searching for a good image online. And wow! it’s a quite high price for a photo, even for the extra small size.

I gotta say I can get very picky when choosing an image for a post (mea culpa). So maybe, cataloging and sharing open media for some specific areas has been overlooked, and as @lightweight was saying it is important to let them know there is a different approach.