On 29/10/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Personally I am of viewpoint #2, and feel that we are short-changing photographers who generously release their work for virtually no recompense. I feel that if we are not willing to attribute the photo properly, by putting the owner's name at the same level as the photo, then we should bar the use of these kinds of images.
The obvious counterpoint -
We don't byline articles, and whilst most of those are definitely collaborative works, a decent fraction (10%? 20%?) are undeniably the work of a single author with some minor amendment by others. So why should a photographer - a contributor of one single element of the whole - get special treatment over the contributor of what is the most significant element by far?
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That is a deliberately brusque statement of the position, but I think it's a very important thing to remember. Our cumulative work has no prominent attribution; all authors are recorded and attributed (albeit rather inefficiently), but you have to deliberately check to see who they are. We aggressively clamp down on people trying to sign their work, because we feel it's Not The Way It's Done.
The way I see it, both #1 and #2 are legitimate ways of doing things and both comply with the terms of the license as well as being generally in line with how the world as a whole does these things. Newspapers almost always byline photographs because there's no practical other way to do it; in books, however, it's quite common to find a page at the back somewhere with all the photograph credits.
I think the fact that we *ourselves* make a point of being discreet about attribution makes it more reasonable for us to go with #1 - as a photographer, I would feel short-changed if the authors were prominently credited but I wasn't, whilst I wouldn't feel offended at being relegated to the small print on p.350 if the authors themselves were in the small print on p.348.
Does that latter distinction make sense?