I spent yesterday writinga lengthy blog entry over at LuckyOliver on Why I Will Never Use Creative Commons Images. I’ve expounded at length over there as to why I think Creative Commons sucks in practice, even though it’s a fine notion in concept. Nevertheless, I do realise that Creative Commons is widely embraced. So leaving all bitching and moaning to once side, I thought it might be useful to share some of what I’ve found in doing light Creative Commons research, and note some thoughts on good practices if you are a Creative Commons user.

If you’re releasing images under a Creative Commons license, it’s important to note that the attribution portion of the CC license may simply state:

You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

If you don’t specify anything, you’re leaving yourself open to the interpretation that no attribution is required. In fact, unless you specify that you want a link back to the original, a link arguably doesn’t even have to be used:

If you are using a work licensed under one of our core licenses… then the proper way of accrediting your use of a work when you’re making a verbatim use is: (4) the Uniform Resource Identifier for the work if specified by the author and/or licensor.

To avoid this, you need a Creative Commons Attribution Statement (something that as far as I can tell, does not currently exist anywhere) that specifies how you want to be credited for your work. So, if you’re releasing CC images on your own site, create a Creative Commons Attribution page that’s easily found; if you’re just uploading to Flickr, then use your Profile page for your statement.

My statement would read:

Some photographs on this site | in my Flickr stream are released under Creative Commons license, which requires attribution. If you wish to use my work under the associated license, images should be attributed to ©Sabrina Dent with a link to or URL of http://www.sabrinadent.com/(or your gallery page or Flickr profile or whatever you prefer) provided. While not required by the license, I would appreciate it if you could let me know when and how my images are used.

That should cover you for both web and print, so it’s a start, at least.

If you’re using Creative Commons images, one thing you (and virtually everyone else) may have missed is that Creative Commons attribution not only requires a link/credit for the original creator, it also requires a link to Creative Commons license being utilised:

You also need to provide the Uniform Resource Locator for the Creative Commons license that applies to the work, together with each copy of the work that you make available.

While I’m a fan of the idea of Creative Commons, I generally find using Creative Commons to be a ginormous pain in my arse for this and many other reasons and I usually just cannot be bothered. But among people who embrace its use, I think there’s a real need for best practice documentation and some user friendly How To posts. We’re failing on both the creator and the user end to understand how Creative Commons works, and more importantly, the additional steps we need to take individually to make the licensing valid and keep the system valuable.

Image: Three Cats ©ramseyarnaoot [cc]