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Proving Creative Commons Licensing of a Work?

Posted by Cliff on from the submarine-license-changes dept.

Q7U asks: "I recently posted a few Creative Commons licensed photographs from Flickr on one of my websites. I later noticed that one of the photographers had retroactively switched all of his photos from the Creative Commons license to an 'All Right Reserved' notice. When I saw this I went ahead and removed his photo (even though I understand that CC licenses are perpetual unless violated), but this begs the question: How does one prove one obtained a work under a Creative Commons license, should there ever be a dispute between a creator and the licensee? Is a simple screenshot of the webpage where it was offered proof enough? Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated."

2 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Other Considerations by TheWanderingHermit · · Score: 4, Informative

    For me, as a writer, director, producer, and someone who sometimes does some amateur photography and other types of image creation, I think there's a bigger issue.

    I, personally, don't want to be using someone's work as part of mine if they don't want it involved. When Kubrick used music from György Ligeti, his favorite composer, he was later sued for misuse of the composer's work. (I hear the composer won, but I don't remember the details.)

    If someone has made photos licensed under CC, if I were going to use them, I'd be sure to obtain permission and verification first. I know there are some people who don't care about such things, but I feel it can detract from my work or my later editing of that work if there are issues involving arguments or fights over whether or not I had the right to use something in what I was doing.

    In other words, do you really want to put in all the effort to use something against the will of the creator/author instead of finding something else that will do?

  2. Flickr by Ray+Radlein · · Score: 4, Informative
    That can actually be a bit of a problem with Flickr; if you regularly upload both CC and © photos to your account, it can be very easy to accidentally upload pictures under the wrong license. On several occasions I have uploaded a photo meaning for it to be ©, only to discover that I had forgotten to turn off CC, leaving me to scramble over to the properties page and adjust the license. I was always absurdly afraid that someone would grab my picture in those few moments before I made the change and go to town on it.


    Finally, I changed my default upload permissions to ©, on the theory that I could always CC-license the pictures after I was finished uploading them.