What part of attribution do you not understand?

Here’s what you see if you try to download one of my photos on Flickr.

Veesees photo showing Creative Commons license rights

There’s a Creative Commons license notice that some rights are reserved right under the photo. It clearly shows that the license uses the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.

Attribution. That means you give credit to the particular artist whose image you are using.

I took a lot of photos at BlogHer. I take photos of most big events I go to. I like to take photos. I like to share them on Flickr. I even like it when people appreciate my photo enough to want to use it on their blog or website. But only with attribution! Don’t steal it and don’t ignore the CC license attached to it!

I’m reading articles all over the web about BlogHer09. I’m upset to see how many blogs and sites are using my photos without so much as a wave in my direction or a request for permission. You know better, people.

3 thoughts on “What part of attribution do you not understand?”

  1. I see a lot of people doing similar things all the time. What’s worse is that this is technically the same as “piracy,” but without the negative intent. The way I see it, part of the issue is that people who have become so accustomed to just taking that they fail to see the difference in what they do.

    Now, speaking as a blogger who makes heavy use of CC-licensed material myself, I must say that I do not always attribute sources, but this is ONLY if I don’t know the source myself. When I see my work on another person’s site, I like to assume best intent, get in touch with that person, and explain that I would like attribution for the work. So far, no one’s ever said no to that. And I also make sure that I am openly inviting references to sources to provide proper attribution where I have not done so already.

    And the bottom line is it’s really not that much effort. I do wish more people were more interested in doing things *right* and not just getting things publishedā€¦.

  2. Unfortunately I think that a lot of people DON’T understand how copyright works online, even published authors who ought to know better.  Plenty of people using images from Flickr have no clue in the world what those licenses mean.

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