Playing by the Creative Commons Rules on Flickr
A friend of mine recently had one of her photos used in a blog. The blogger grabbed my friend’s photo off of Flickr, assuming that since it was on Flickr, it was available for use. In reality, my friend marked her photos All Rights Reserved, which prohibits unauthorized use – even on a blog. In this case, the blogger was ignorant of Creative Commons rules.
I offer a session on spicing up your training using free Web 2.0 technologies. But a large part of my presentation is the proper use and understanding of Creative Commons licensing. I thought I’d cover a little of it here, as my friend’s situation really brought it all back to my attention. A rule of thumb: Just because someone posts a photo to Flickr doesn’t mean the photo is there for all to use. Think of Flickr as a physical photo album for a moment. You might show your album to all of your friends, but you don’t want someone running off with one of those photos.
Using Creative Commons Licensed Images
When you’re searching Flickr for photos to use, make sure to use the Advanced Search feature. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can choose to search only Creative Commons photos. Using this feature ensures that you don’t end up choosing items marked All Rights Reserved. An alternative to the Flickr Advanced Search is CompFight, a Flickr search engine that also lets you specify Creative Commons photos.
When you find a photo you like, check out the licensing. Go to the Download page for the photo. Under the image, you’ll see the Creative Commons license, which is circled in the screenshot shown here.
(flower photo from Flickr user noehg)
The Creative Commons license images are actually hyperlinks. If you don’t know what the images stand for, just click. In this case, we’re taken to a page where it specifies the user is fine with us using the photo, but we must provide attribution. As far as attribution goes, I always try to provide not just the Flickr user, but a link back to the original photo.
Creative Commons licensing was created to encourage the legal sharing and remixing of content. But everyone deserves credit for their work, which is why attribution is such an important part of Creative Commons.
Creative Commons licenses are controlled by four original conditions
- Attribution (by): You may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if you give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
- Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): You may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.
- No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): You may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it.
- ShareAlike (sa): You may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.
These conditions can be combined, as shown in the chart below:
Licensing Your Own Images
Of course, all of this works for you as well as for the photographers in question. You can license your own work. People experience unauthorized use of their photos on Flickr for two reasons: the user is unaware of Creative Commons rules (or is aware and thinks they won’t get caught), and the photographer is unaware of Creative Commons rules. I’ve already covered the former – let’s talk about how to set the licensing on your own Flickr photos.
Remember that you can only copyright images that you own. This
means you can’t copyright images that you’ve taken from somewhere else.
You can set a default license for your images on Flickr. This means that all images you upload will automatically have this setting.
To add a license for a specific picture, click Edit next
to your current photo license near the bottom of your photo page. On the next page, select one
of the Creative Commons licenses. This will override your default settings for the one photo only.
Using Flickr to spice up your blog or presentations is a great tool, but always verify the license first and make sure that it’s not All Rights Reserved. Remember, it’s a fantastic thing to be able to share content and use
content from others. In most cases, whether on a web page or in your
PowerPoint presentation, all that’s required is a little attribution,
and giving credit where credit is due.
Cheers!
–
Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.
Chuck
July 14th, 2008 at 12:23 pm #
Great post. You answered many questions I’ve always had about CC. Thank you.
To help keep it legit I use the compfight (http://www.compfight.com/) search engine as well as the WordPress plugin Photo Dropper. Thanks again.
Dr. Debs
July 14th, 2008 at 12:29 pm #
Thanks from me, too, about this great post. I am, however, confused as to how someone could grab an all rights reserved picture off Flickr. Usually when you try to save it, it won’t work but only saves a “spaceball.gif”. I’ve also run into trouble with people who indicate their pictures are all rights reserved, but enable registered users to blog the picture with the “blog this” button. What are you supposed to do in such cases? They have given you permission to use the picture in a blog, but retained all rights? If you can shed any light on this I would be hugely grateful, since I try to do the right thing but maybe I’m not?
Michelle Lentz
July 14th, 2008 at 12:44 pm #
Deb – I think that a lot of times, the Flickr users themselves are a bit confused. Saying “yes you can blog my photo” directly conflicts with All Rights Reserved. For ethics sake, more than anything else, I’d avoid blogging those photos and default to the ARR designation. It’s best just to search Flickr using Advanced Search with CC turned on or use CompFight with CC turned on. My guess is that some Flickr users are afraid that w/out turning on the blogging feature, they won’t be able to blog their own photos. In reality, you can specify who sees the Blog This button in the Flickr prefs. If it’s a friend of yours of course, just ask first.
As for the spaceball.gif, well, there are always ways to get photos, not the least being SnagIt or even PrintScreen. Again, there’s a pref in Flickr where you can set who can download your photos. In my case, it’s set to Family and Friends (per my Flickr contacts), but even with All Rights Reserved you can set it to Anyone. (Just tried it.)
See why I actually offer a class on this? It can be really confusing!
steve Garfield
July 21st, 2008 at 12:09 pm #
Part of the problem is flickr.
I just blogged about this yesterday and today…
Check it out:
New Feature Request: CC License on Flickr SHARE THIS code
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-feature-request-cc-license-on.html
in that post I show how the flickr SHARE THIS code needs to be enhanced to include CC licenses…
Creative Commons Photo License Broken, twice in one day!
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2008/07/creative-commons-photo-license-broken.html
Here’s an example of how a mainstream vs independent blogger handled be notified of a problem.
Also, about blog this! on flick, that shouldn’t show up if the person has all right reserved!
It’s a simple IF THEN ELSE statement. I learned it when coding in BASIC.
Please flickr, fix this.
Brad Shorr
July 24th, 2008 at 2:36 pm #
Thanks for this post. I’m new to flickr and I don’t think they do a very good job of explaining reuse protocol.