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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 8/25/07, James Duncan Davidson <james at duncandavidson.com> wrote:
> It's pretty hard to snag a photo from a book. 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.

These people are (copyright) idiots.
Without some knowledge of the license status you have no right to use
an image you found and didn't create. Full stop.

If people are this ignorant there isn't much we can do to resolve that.

This is the same challenge faced by the big copyright holders when
they find their content shared freely on file trading services. If
they can't stop the public from ignoring their obligations under
copyright law, how can we?


[snip]
> The credit is gone. Right click and save an image, the credit was never
> seen.

For a while we had a function to pop up a notice asking people to
left-click for attribution and for a larger version of the image on
the first time they right clicked an image.

It was removed because overriding the context menu is considered
harmful and it reminds users of "capture context menu to avoid saving"
traps. A valid complaint. But without doing that we lose a useful
tool.

Do you think that doing that is a good idea?


> The medium is the web. You guys know what the heck a mediawiki is. The world
> that uses it sees web content and _may_ know that they can edit it. I
> certainly don't care that the medium is a particular kind of software. It is
> what shows up on my screen.

Attribution on the web is very commonly provided via click-through.
It's also very commonly provided buried elsewhere on the site.

Providing attribution on a click-through is functionally equal to
providing it on the next page of a book.  Where we're not doing so
well today is making it clear that the click-through is possible. We
plan to improve that where we reasonably can.

You're also in a weak position to complain about attribution. I see a
fair amount of Wikipedia content on your blog, even on just the single
page that started this discussion,  and you've completely failed to
name any of the authors of that content.

Why are you trying to hold us to a higher standard than you practice yourself?

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


We have a huge number of photographers ourselves.  You're speaking to
many right now by posting on commons-l. We care about having fair and
reasonable attribution.

As a photographer I think that you're demanding an unreasonable amount
of attribution. Attribution should be readily available. It shouldn't
be a blank check to have your name plastered all over the place.

Please don't think that our images are mostly images we're finding on
flickr. They aren't.

[snip]
> 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.

Compromise is fantastic, but it also requires that you recognize when
you're asking too much. We are willing to improve, but you need to
recognize the challenges we face.

And, again, as a photographer: Please don't claim to speak for me. You
don't. You don't speak for all photographers.


[snip]
> 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.

We are in full conformance with the attribution requirements of CC-By.
Under these licenses you have waved the ability to specify the exact
character of attribution.

Furthermore under CC-by-*-2.5 and later, with a change to our sites
terms of service we could instead provide attribution to ourselves,
rather than you, for CC-by images uploaded to us.

"reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of
the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or
(ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or
parties (e.g. a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for
attribution in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by
other reasonable means,"

We wouldn't do that.  But don't claim that we are not in conformance
with the Creative Commons Attribution license.

> 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.

Preserving some EXIF fields is a very reasonable request. It's one
which we're already working on and which we would have already were it
not for some technical challenges.