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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."

5 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?

    1. Re:Other Considerations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      That's the whole point of CC. The licenses are permission. If you have to get permission anyway, then what the hell is the point of CC in the first place?

    2. Re:Other Considerations by TheWanderingHermit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If by that you mean that, when somebody quite clearly says something in unambiguous language in a license vetted by top lawyers, I believe them to actually mean it, then yes, I'm a literalist.

      No. I mean someone who is so focused on the exact words that they think real life works the same way. In other words, someone that thinks saying something a certain way makes it so, as opposed to someone who uses words and language to describe the world as it is. Contracts and licenses are one thing, discussing human behavior is another. If you have trouble separating this, read a dozen Sherlock Holmes stories for a bit of insight. While the great detective thought and behaved very logically, a major part of his brilliance was the understanding of how illogically and passionately people behaved.

      Oh, I totally know that. But how is getting an additional something in writing prevents this. You can be sued for anything without cause, remember?

      Ah, here's a great example of the above point: the difference between the nice, neat world that exists in theory and the diverse and sometimes messy one that exists in the world that contains humans. If you've gone through the effort of contacting a person, even with just a letter that took less than 3 minutes to type up, then they are much more likely to "warm up" to you and keep a positive opinion of you. By contacting them, even though their work is licensed under CC, you are showing a level of respect for them. Yes, they can still file a suit, but 1) they have had a personal communication with me at that point, and I'm no longer just a faceless name. 2) They will likely remember specifically giving me permission to use their work and not want to take action. 3) They also remember that I have signed papers they sent me, and are aware they don't have a leg to stand on.

      Humans are emotional beings first, and logical only 2nd or 3rd. For example, I knew a friend in Amway who was sure she'd get rich. I showed her a set of numbers that proved a large part of the profit was not in selling the products, but in selling the CDs to people like her. She had the IQ of a genius (literally) and knew Math well, but didn't want to believe that what they were telling her was not true. What's the point and why am I saying this? People do not always behave logically, but if one takes time to understand people and their passions and what drives different types of people, one can reduce one's problems quite significantly.

      One time I needed to use shots of a state building in a project I was producing. I could have easily shot from the street and used all the footage without ever talking to the state. Instead I took some time to find out who the person was in charge of that building and talked with him. It took less than 20 minutes to track him down and talk with him. This was, btw, not long after 9/11, and people were still paranoid. I told him what I was doing, why I wanted the shot, and let the conversation digress into how our state is encouraging more commercial video and film production. He started to see it from the point of view that agreeing to what I was doing was helping a small business in the state and ultimately helping the state itself in terms of commerce. It may not seem like much, but then was I was shooting, I noticed the state troopers in the area (yes, I was near the state capitol, where troopers would come through from time to time) watching me, then eventually coming up to me. I gave him the name of the man I talked to and his office number. He checked, and walked away within less than 3 minutes, which was valuable time I needed for shooting, since it was during magic hour.

      I didn't have to call for permission. I would likely have been able to talk the trooper into letting me keep shooting, but I can't be sure, especially since that was so soon after 9/11. A few minutes ahead of time, talking to an amiable bureaucrat, saved me the time I needed when I needed it (magic hour, btw, is about 45 minutes during sunse

  2. Welcome to Copyright! by Shihar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you decide you want to buy a piece of land, or think that a piece of land is public property and would like to perform some activity on it, what do you do? You got to the local town office and find out who owns the land, what restrictions there on that land, and who you must contact to ask permission to use or buy the land. This is a good system that has been in place in the US since its foundation.

    The copyright system is like private property's evil twin. It is still a form of "property", but the "system" designed to deal with questions of use and ownership is utterly non-existent. For instance, this post I am writing is protected by copyright. True, there is no indication in this post that shows it is under copyright, and the fact that I have my e-mail address hidden means that you can't ask permission to use it. This post will NOT be recorded in any government database so you can never look up who owns it and what the rules of using it are. Our current copyright system is a default "everything is copyrighted" and there is absolutely NO record of who owns what. You can't even find out when a copyright expires because there is no record of when it was first created.

    We desperately need a new copyright system.

    The new system should REQUIRE the registration of copyrighted content. There MUST be a public record of who owns what and for how long they have had it under copyright. Further, there is not a damn reason in the world why we need copyrights that span centuries as the current system does. Anything that is not registered as copyrighted should be considered public domain. Slap in a fee of a couple bucks to register copyrighted content, throw up an Internet site to register such copyrights, and we would have a workable system.

    The current system as about as far away from good as you can possibly get. To answer the articles original question, there is absolutely nothing you can do. There are no records of what is under copyright and no way of finding out if that copyright changes. The current system sucks balls and no politician gives a shit because voters don't realize such issues exist, much less care about such issues.

    Sucks to be someone who uses creative content. Sorry.

  3. 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.