[WikiEN-l] Attributing "attribution required" free images

[Tracy Poff]

On 10/29/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Question: why should we give special prominence and mention of the
> original author to a carefully composed, lovingly shot photo whose license
> requires attribution to the author(s), and not give special prominence and
> mention of the original author to a carefully composed, lovingly written
> article/text whose license requires attribution to the author(s)?

It's mostly about what people expect, I'd say. No one expects to see a
bunch of author names splashed across the sidebar showing who wrote
what; in cases where books have many editors and authors we're used to
seeing a page or three listing them--separately from the text. In the
case of photographs, though, people are used to seeing credit in the
captions: newspapers, magazines, books, and even encyclopedias often
do this. True, some leave all image credits for a separate section of
the book, so our method isn't without precedent, but neither is the
credit-in-the-caption method.

> I've noticed people seem to hold photos and text to very different standards.
> For example, I don't think I've once seen anyone remove chunks of quoted
> text for being 'excessive fair use', and yet similar actions and rationale for
> images are too common for me to need to belabor the point.

In this case, 'excessive fair use' is probably secret code for 'so
many photos we can't really claim fair use anymore'. Taken in that
context, this happens all the time: for example, I often find myself
removing song lyrics from articles about songs. In some cases the
complete lyrics have been listed, in others a large part of them. It
can certainly be appropriate to quote some of them for commentary, but
quoting the whole song is 'excessive fair use'.

Note, though, that I'm not taking a position on the issue of where to
give credit on photos. I think that it's a good idea to make sure
people know where to find the credits/license, but I'm not sure that
putting credits in the caption is necessarily a good way to go either.
A lot of arguments for and against it were brought up last time we had
this discussion, so I won't rehash them; suffice it to say that I
wasn't convinced of either position. I hope we can come to a good
conclusion this time through.

Tracy Poff