Discussing Creative Commons
Yesterday, when @robjdlc tweeted “People tagging in flickr! At long last!“, I didn’t realize that Flickr has gone all Facebook and lets you tag people in photos. I actually thought that he meant people were at long last starting to tag their photos, which I didn’t realize had been a problem. I responded with another problem and tweeted “@robjdlc Now how can we get them to license their photos?“.
I realize now why this didn’t entirely make sense at the time, but I did point Rob to a Discussion post on the Flickr: Bloomfield group where I encourage people to license their photos. Much like Creative Commons itself, I don’t think many people on Flickr use or even know about the Discussion feature, so I’m going to repost it here:
By default, photos added to Flickr are “All rights reserved”, which means that nobody can do anything with your work. Flickr encourages people to choose a Creative Commons license as an alternative to full copyright, which will still retain your rights to the work but allow others to use it if they give you proper credit. There are several different licenses to choose from, including some that don’t allow commercial uses of your work, and Flickr gives a good explanation of them all here.
The reason we encourage you to use Creative Commons is so that we (Bloomfield Development Corporation, a community nonprofit) can use your photos in the pages and blog posts on the Bloomfield Now website, and credit you when we do. Of course, this may help your work get published in other sources as well — my brother has had his Flickr photos published in Gothamist and Wikipedia.
If you’re interested in sharing your photos with the Bloomfield community, you can set a default license for your photostream. If you want to license your existing photos, you can batch license them here. It just takes a click.
FYI, I license all of my photos under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which means that anyone can use my photos for noncommercial purposes, including creating derivative works/remixes, as long as they give me credit.
If you want us to know that you have licensed your photos so we can use them on the site, just email me or respond to this topic.
Rob responded with some points of his own, so I know that at least one person read my post:
If only the general public could really get to understand the impacts of this sort of thing.
By loosening stranglehold on your content that “all rights reserved” implies, you allow for innovation. With photography for any sort of intellectual property, the moment you create it, under US law, it is by default copywritten by you. No paperwork needs to be filed, no words need to be said, its just an automatic license. Its great if whatever you’ve created you’d like no one else to do anything but look at. If, however, you’d like for your content to be shared with other folks who might like it, promoted, even remixed to create new things, if you don’t specify something other than copyright, all of the above acts are illegal.
So you can use creative commons, which as this point is serving up billions of licenses worldwide and has taken several precedents in court, to specify exactly who and how your content can be used.
I, much like Carman, use Attrib-NonCom-SA, so folks can share my work with whomever they want, as long as they dont sell it, and anything they make with it must be shared as well.
Just as much as Flickr was a remix of the idea of a photo sharing community, your ideas too can be used to create great new things, as long as you allow it to happen.
I mean this to be an informative post, but if any of my readers don’t use Creative Commons, I’d like to read why. Is it because you didn’t know about it, or is it because you’re a terrible person who never learned to share? Perhaps you’re a terrible person who shares too much, or perhaps you do respect Creative Commons and like to blog about social media assholes who don’t. Discuss.
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As quickly as online tools tend to become second nature for those who use them, I’m still shocked that more people don’t opt to employ Creative Commons licenses.
Case in point: I recently searched Flickr for Creative Commons-licensed photos of me taken at PodCamp Pittsburgh 4, and I only found half a dozen, all from the same 2 or 3 people. Evidently, those of us who believe in the value of CC aren’t espousing its virtues in a clear and compelling enough way (yet). Either that, or most content creators are convinced that their work is going to make them millionaires commercially.
Comment by Justin Kownacki — October 22, 2009 @ 1:12 PM
I’ve run into the same problem many times trying to find photos that I can post online.
The particular situation Justin mentions is even more egregious, since the bylaws of PodCamp (as stated in the PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 Attendee Guide which was emailed to all registrants) states that “All content created must be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license”.
Some of them are breaking the first two rules of PodCamp Club.
Comment by admin — October 22, 2009 @ 1:23 PM
regarding the PodCamp rules: Do you think it is deliberate? Or just a case of ignorance and/or forgetfulness? My guess is one of the latter, and thus probably solved by education.
Comment by ClumberKim — October 22, 2009 @ 1:36 PM
When it comes to photos, I’m guilty as charged. It’s not intentional, however. I do not want photos of my kid used by anyone under any circumstances since I think that should be her decision to make. She’s not old enough to do that yet, so I have my default Flickr setting as all rights reserved. When it comes to other photos, I’m all about the sharing. Attribute and use, use, and use some more. Wouldn’t it be nice if I would remember to give those photos a creative commons license? D’oh!
Off to change some of them now . . .
Comment by Burgh Baby — October 22, 2009 @ 1:37 PM
I don’t think it is malicious. People posting are probably are just ignorant (in the true sense of the word). I think education of what CC is could be the solution.
~ Joel
Comment by Joel Mark Witt — October 22, 2009 @ 1:37 PM
came here from a twitter link from Justin….
a quick background of who i am, i’m a stay at home mom of two boys, my husband and i run a photography/media company. He’s a photojournalist and teaches photojournalism, I’m a social media coordinator and we both have a love of photography. We both have our flickr accounts set to All Rights Reserved. To pull a quote from above “allow(ing) others to use it if they give you proper credit” giving proper credit seldom happens and IF it does, what does that do for me? does it feed my family, put shoes on our children, or pay for daily parking? No. It cheapens the trade, it cuts the need for real photography, it puts us out of work. I know Justin had a blog post this morning about journalists becoming obsolete – Creative Commons Licensing creates more of the same problem.
Comment by cara — October 22, 2009 @ 1:39 PM
Cara: I think being a photojournalist puts your husband in a category where a Creative Commons license wouldn’t make much sense for HIS work — at least, not the work he feels is good enough to make a living from.
But for the 99% of people who own cameras, the photos they take are unlikely to be sold at a premium on the open market, and they’re probably not expecting to license their family portraits or photographic experiments on a daily basis. In their case, if they’re taking photos to document or explore their world, it makes sense that they’d want others to see it, and that desire is aided by CC licensing.
This does raise a great issue, though — which speaks back to our old intellectual property debate as well — namely: everyone needs a realistic understanding of the dividing line between amateur and professional. If you’re good enough to make a living by selling your work, go for it — but since we’re all our own worst (or, alternately, our most lenient) critics, it can be hard to tell when your skill level has crossed that line.
Comment by Justin Kownacki — October 22, 2009 @ 2:02 PM
Cara, Burgh Baby: There are some situations where full copyright may be an appropriate choice. The problem, as a few other people mentioned, is with education — I doubt most people choose “All rights reserved”. If Flickr integrated this choice into their account creation, people would still have the choice not to license, but it would be for a reason and not out of ignorance.
Cara, I’m sorry to hear that proper credit seldom happens — I think that most legitimate bloggers and podcasters do give credit, but you have probably dealt with marketing douchebags. I’m curious though, whether the people who don’t give credit even respect full copyright.
No, I don’t think anyone deliberately broke the PodCamp rules, but I do think everyone should read the attendee guide to at least page 3. Justin & I worked hard on that
Comment by admin — October 22, 2009 @ 2:04 PM
Justin – You made a good point 99% of the folks out there putting their photos on the web probably aren’t looking for a dime. The problem is a portion of that 99% produce some pretty stellar images, these images are sometimes used for marketing or advertising where there are budgets in place for payment but someone is missing out. Is the the image owner? Is it the local photographer? as Carmen called them, these Marketing Douchbags are the ones in need of an education.
Carmen – as you mentioned, yes educating the flickr user about licensing option in a more prominent area would be helpful to a degree but ONLY if the definitions are detailed. I do feel the default should stay as All Rights Reserved. Flickr is usually very pro-photog friendly and I highly doubt they would change that default. and to your point about those not giving proper credit, of COURSE they aren’t respecting full copyright…. or much of anything in most situations…
Comment by cara — October 22, 2009 @ 2:24 PM
Cara: If there is a budget in place for payment, that is a commercial use. My photos are licensed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, so that use would be illegal. Would I have the time and resources to fight it? No more or less than if I held full copyright.
As far as Flickr’s explanation of Creative Commons, I think it does a very good job, which is why I keep linking to it. I would never expect, nor want them to change the default, since full copyright is what is granted by law by default.
Comment by admin — October 22, 2009 @ 2:30 PM
Cara: If amatuers can put you out of work, maybe you’re just not cut out for the increased levels of competition that’s created by dropping cost of hardware + cheap, free Internet distribution.
This is happening to lots of industries. Those that make the buggies lobby the government, whine and cry about ‘fair,’ and the horseless carriage types just keep going faster.
Now that I’m done trolling, I, for one, didn’t know that those were the rules for PodCamp. Hell, I didn’t know there were any rules for PodCamp. Maybe that’s part of your problem.
Comment by Steve — October 22, 2009 @ 3:43 PM
Cara: (This has been touched on, but I figured I would reply as I’ve heard the same sort of argument you pose from so many different people) The simple message I try to convey when I explain to folks the utility of creative commons is to educate yourself on the benefits of sharing some of your content and to, at the very least, license your content purposely, not under a default umbrella. I’m a freelance photographer, and I do sell content to clients, but at the same time I take many photos for the sheer joy of photography, and those, which you’d see on my flickr page, are all CC. Sure there are plenty of photos that are stolen every day, violating licenses and rights of the folks who made them, but until we educate the masses on exactly whats going on, there is little impact.
Like Carmen said, most of us dont have the time, money, or legal resources to pursue license infringement, however if we can get more folks to understand and actively participate in the licensing process, less companies and individuals are likely to get away with it.
Whaling and seal hunting were cool until large groups of people figured out that it wasn’t such a bright idea. The copyright laws of yesteryear do not work with internet content, as with every bit that you view, it is copied, regardless of license, on to your computer, its just the way the internet works. Information is shared no matter what, and creative commons is a small step in bringing to the public eye the idea that we need new ways to manage our rights in the digital age.
Its a shame that so many people who would gladly share their photos for the sort of use that Carmen is looking for, are instead ignorant to the fact that they are forbidding any such use by default.
Comment by Rob — October 22, 2009 @ 9:32 PM