I think that the rule against photography still makes sense, in cases where the photographs don't contain a user's artwork. There *are* abundant sites for showing your photos, and fewer dedicated exclusively to art! But collage...

I think that there should still be protections against cut-and-pasting bits of unidentified artworks together. But a) if a user wanted to make a manipulation involving their own works, that's a different thing, and b)...

I'm remembering an art prof I had who was fond of giving people exercises involving collage the old-fashioned way. Precise, detailed little cuttings out of old magazines with exacto knives, pasting together the thin glossy paper into new configurations on a sheet of artboard with layers of rubber cement. I think some of the stuff that came from those assignments *was* art - even if it still contained pieces of recognizable images. And I'm also thinking of the word "collage" used loosely to indicate "I put bits of things together to make something new" - chopping up photos for their color palettes and arranging the pieces in shapes, mixed with beads or shells or old metal standing off of them like relief sculptures.

I think... I think if someone is *either* using their own work, *or* using and altering stock as part of their work with evidence of the photographer's permission, or - magazine-clippings are a little shakier because they are commercial art for which you can't necessarily contact the photographer *for* permission but after they've been released into the world in bulk on cheap glossy paper in conjunction with articles and adverts for a number of years I'm not sure it makes an ethical difference how you use them? Basically, if you can show effort, show sources (at least to some extent, or at least have some standard of reasonable likelihood you aren't ripping another artist off), and show significant alterations from the original raw material, I think there might be a place for collage works here.