Lawyers and Interpretation Rule the World

I love using creative commons photography for all my posts. There is something nice about having a fun image associated with each post.

I find all my images on Flickr and make sure they are under the creative commons license. At the bottom of every post, I put an image credit of the person who took the photo according to Flickr.

Bethan Phillips contacted me, saying:

Remove this image - you’ve violated the copyright by adding text, and putting ‘Image Credit: Bethan’ with no hyperlink is not an acceptable way to credit an author - how the hell is anyone meant to be able to find my image from that? Remove it, immediately.

I instantly noticed the tone of the message. Anger. I don’t like to enforce negative attitudes and my first thought was to ignore her. But, she had a point. It was her image. So, I did as she asked. Replacing the image with a different image I found on Flickr and attributing the author the same way I attributed Bethan.

The reason I took it down, wasn’t because she wasn’t polite. It was because I respect the creative commons license and want to abide by it’s rules.

According to the license I am required to abide by these three things:

• Attribution - I must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse me).

• Noncommercial - I can’t use the work for commercial purposes.

• No Derivative Works - I can’t alter, transform, or build upon this work.

What Did I Do Wrong?

First, I was in the wrong. I overlaid text on top of the image using CSS.

I am not altering, transforming, or building on these images. At least, not by my definition. The words on top of the image are done with CSS. I don’t consider this in violation of the copyright, but maybe it is. I’m not a lawyer.

I didn’t feel that this was altering, transforming, or building upon, however, I could understand how one could argue it is, because the browser is rendering a transformed piece of work.

The hard part of the messaging around attribution is the phrase, “in the manner specified by the author.”

On Flickr, how am I supposed to find this in an automated way? If they want a link back, then their should be a license for linking back. The point is even made in the FAQ on the creative commons site.

How do I properly attribute a work offered under a Creative Commons license?

All CC licenses require users to attribute the original creator(s) of a work, unless the creator has waived that requirement or asked that her name be removed from an adaptation or collection. CC licenses have a sophisticated and flexible attribution requirement, so there is not necessarily one correct way to provide attribution. The proper method for giving credit will depend on the medium and means you are using, and may be implemented in any reasonable manner, although in the case of an adaptation or collection the credit needs to be as prominent as credits for other contributors. The CC website offers some best practices to help you attribute works, and the CC Australia team has developed a helpful guide to attributing works in different formats.

So, there isn’t a standard way to do attribution. Does the way I scaffold my site depend on the authors of the images I choose to use? Was this the intention of Creative Commons?

What do you think? Is adding some text and CSS considered a derivative work?