[Commons-l] Making damn sure image attribution is very clear

[geni]

On 8/25/07, James Duncan Davidson <james at duncandavidson.com> wrote:
> Right. There is some of that metadata that is unimportant in many
> contexts--sensor dust data and the like come to mind. But, the IPTC style
> stuff: title, caption, created by, copyright. That's the stuff that one
> really cares about. And it's the baby that goes out with the bathwater.

Standardisation on meta data is iffy dicey. I've dug copyright notices
out of images that more automated scans have missed.
>
> geni wrote:
>
>
> Nyet. Plenty of books put the credit at the end. How many books have
> the credit for the cover art on the cover?
>
> It's pretty hard to snag a photo from a book.

Given the mass digitisation projects going on at the moment I think
that statement only works in the past tense.

>I've tracked down many
> violations of my CC-licensed photographs to people who "borrowed" them from
> Wikipedia. WIthout any indication that they are subject to any kind of
> license, well, people don't know. And that's what they've told me.


If they thought the image was not subject to any kind of license then
they thought they were violating copyright. Not much we can do about
that.

> As well, Wikipedia isn't a book. It's not a pamphlet either. It's a website.

Commons also serves wikibooks.

> And websites can be used in a variety of ways. The content can be
> repurposed. Print a Wikipedia page. The credit is gone. Archive it as a PDF.
> The credit is gone. Right click and save an image, the credit was never
> seen.

Scan a page of a book. Watch the same effect.


> > By crediting in a manner that is
> > accepted and practiced in the photographic industry,
>
> We are not part of the photographic industry. More relevant examples
> would be Encarta and Britannica online. Or just general websites.
>
> Encarta and Britannica make sure that every piece of content, including
> photographs, are licensed in a way that is appropriate. They also give
> credit. You bring up Encarta, here's Bill Clinton's page on Encarta:
>
> http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564341/Clinton_Bill.html
>
> The image provided there is small and obviously leads to more content. Click
> on it, and you land on a page with a usabel size image. And there's the
> credit.

Sounds identical to wikipedia.

>
> http://encarta.msn.com/media_461526028_761564341_-1_1/Bill_Clinton.html
>
> If you're going to put up reasonably sized images on the article pages, you
> should give credit there.

Reasonably sized? 250px is less than an inch of quality printing.


> That's what I'm doing here and trying to communicate, as a photographer.

I don't think you considered the full implication of what you wrote.
You were getting into moral rights territory.

> And
> I'm not your average photographer. I'm one that spent 5 years in the Open
> Source community and dealing with legal issues. Most photographers just want
> to bury their heads in the sand because all this new stuff is scary. I'm
> trying to communicate to you guys how to do things in a way that will
> increase the participation of photographers in the commons. Obviously, it's
> from my viewpoint, and you have to take that into account, but this is my
> intent.

Wikipedia will not be prepared to accept something it views as
threatening it's integrity to promote commmons.

Crediting authors in captions allows for the addition of spam links
and vanity as well as other issues. Unless you can show a way to deal
with this wikipedia will not change it's position.

> When it comes down to it, I have two options right now. I can saw that my
> use of the CC licenses over the last few years was a blazing mistake and try
> to find a different way to live in the brave world where copyright is
> changing. Or I can try to communicate how you guys can meet us half way so
> that we can get MORE photographers playing ball.

We could do that by accepting NC images.However we do not view that as
acceptable either.

> I believe in the commons. I want it to grow. But if you're going to put
> credit in a place where it's invisible and negates the whole intent of the
> attribution request, then the CC is not a valid tool to use.

Credit is on the same page as the image on commons. This is to be
expected since it is an image repository.

> And since
> Wikipedia is a shining flagship in the commons,

Yes and no would probably disagree. We get okay but tend towards GNU
licenses a lot of the time and have very different objectives.

>how it behaves is, in some
>ways, a standard bearer.

For personal images Flickr has the edge at the moment.

> Understand. But I'm not arguing about ownership of articles.

You are arguing about the ownership of the content in them.

> I'm talking
> about my ownership of content that was placed onto your site by a third
> person. This comes up again and again in the blog comments I've received. My
> placing of content under a CC license in no way means that I am acting as a
> contributor to Wikipedia. There's no reason you can/should establish that
> wikipedian ideas pertain to content that is owned by third parties who are
> not a party to Wikipedia and bury their credit to the point of invisibility.
>

It is not invisible.


> Um, I don't get what you're getting at.

The byline for that image would be: 	

"Ayack, Geni and Old Moonraker"

And that is just with three authors. Can get a lot worse fast.

Spam would be where people want to be credited with a link to a website.

We have people who upload their images under names like "Can't sleep,
clown will eat me" not ideal for inclusion in an article.

While makeing the credit more obvious is not a problem inline credit
is a problem.

>But in the end, it's not my domain.
> I can establish ownership of my images. I provide them in a way that keeps
> information along.

There is no disagreement on this point at least within the US.

> From my perspective, your exposing internal implementation details as a
> reason to not do something. Understand that I don't care what tool is used.
> I'm simply stating that it is problematic when EXIF data is stripped and
> making a request that important metdata be preserved.

And I am telling you what code you need to get rewriten (all open
source). There are many code changes needed and requested and we are
not so rich in coders.

-- 
geni