[cc-community] CC image media - education challenges
support
support at everystockphoto.com
Mon May 29 16:20:15 EDT 2006
Hi, I run www.everystockphoto.com, a search engine for license-specific
creative commons, public domain, and other attribution-based licensed
photo media.
Some of our sources are image repositories such as Flickr, where users
can specify licenses for their media. We are constantly adding new
photos, and now index over 260,000 photos.
One issue I am coming up against over and over again is that people
release their media under CC licenses, without realizing what that
means. At some point, such as finding their photos indexed at my site,
they freak out, change the licenses, and demand I de-list their photos.
So far I have been complying with these requests, even the rude ones.
People say all kinds of things that indicate they have no idea what they
were doing when they set their photos as CC.
Of course, the legality of this issue is covered here:
http://creativecommons.org/faq#What_if_I_change_my_mind? - paraphrased,
once CC, always CC.
What I am wondering is - how can I prove that a photo was once CC, after
a flickr user has changed their license back to All Rights Reserved. Do
I need to start taking screenshots of every photo page? Of course, I use
their API and by defining the license in my call, I know that I am only
getting CC photos, as licensed at that time.
It seems to be that more education is required for the end-users of
these licenses. Sites like Flickr should require that a user read some
material before licensing their photos as CC.
For a site like mine, it is a huge waste of time to scrape photos, often
rate them, and clean up their keywords, perhaps use them on the index
page, and then have to turn around and remove them entirely because the
photographer suddenly realized that CC is more than a cool icon.
What is your opinion on the morality of continuing to distribute a CC
photo after the photographer has changed their mind? How many people
releasing media under CC licences know what they are doing? How does
this speak to the future of CC licensing?
Your thoughts would be appreciated,
best,
Jonathan
everystockphoto.com
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