great walks fees for foreigners up to double price

You'd have to ask DOC. I expect nobody's going to be forced to share their photos with anyone.

That's a pretty measured common sense approach from DOC. He seems to be on base to use the lastest buzzword. Pick holes as you like but in my opinion its a good response.

its symptomatic for DOC, do it for free, get volunteers to replace professional staff, harvest peoples media to promote it to the tourists. there must be two camps in DOC, the genuine conservationists and the eco tourism brigage and the bean counters pushing to privatise DOC and get as much done or free as possible, meanwhile the forests are being destroyed by introduced pests.... all we hear is about the expansion of eco tourism and more resources being put into that and conservation is starved of effective resources, i'm looking at where DOC is heading with their policies and it looks very bleak to me.

DOCs asked for photos, mainly for their brochures, for years. There's usually a photo credit on all of the images used. Its completely voluntary. Some people like sharing their photos. No different to this website really, or Flikr, or Imgur, or Pintrist, or Panoramia etc etc etc

DOC's spending my money, as well as other people's. If certain people want to freely share their photos with DOC to, for example, help inform others, then I'm fine with that. Maybe it'll mean that DOC gets to focus more of its resources on its core responsibilities. We're transitioning into a different world where creating and sharing digital content is very very easy. People do it all the time, almost without thinking. We're all sharing content with @Matthew right now, for free I might add, but most people share content through international mega-corporations which are probably much less caring of their legal rights than DOC will be. The Copyright Act hasn't changed, though. If you don't want DOC to use your content, then don't give it to DOC with a statement saying DOC can use your content, but I'd suspect more than a few out there will be fine with it as long as the purpose is well understood by both sides.

the interesting thing is you cant make money from video shot in national parks without their approval, and possibly a commission to them... not sure about photos....