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What To Do About CC License Violations?
An anonymous reader writes "In the past, I've seen my pictures used by big commercial companies despite the Creative Commons license that clearly limits them to non-commercial use. I just let it slide because a friend who's a lawyer says that all I can do is sue. They've ignored emails and comments. Today, I saw two other examples that show this is pretty rampant. These big commercial corporations are some of the most tech savvy publications around, but they just grabbed the image. One, BoingBoing, even reprinted the 'non-commercial' clause, warning others to stay away. But they've got their ads from Cheerios, HP and Mazda running alongside. Does anyone care that we've gone to all this trouble to create new, more flexible licenses? Does it even matter when very smart people just flip the bird to the license? Is the only alternative to sue? I wouldn't mind asking for $150k and settling for $1 for each copy made, but that seems a bit crazy. I hate to type out DMCA notices but their attitude is that only uncool people complain about this and I should be happy about the publicity. Then they can be happy about not sharing their ad revenue with artists or photographers. What can I do?" Update: 08/30 18:39 GMT by T : (Very belated; mea culpa.) Cory Doctorow writes: "The anonymous submitter is not the creator of the photo. The creator of
that photo is Jennifer Trant, a friend and colleague of mine who has no
trouble with my use of her photo. I have just gotten off the phone with
her and confirmed that she did not submit the story and also that she is
happy to have this photo on Boing Boing." The photo has since been added back to BoingBoing.
Invoice them. If they don't pay, sue them.
This sounds like one of those situations where a DMCA takedown would work...
Wired, having y'know, actual printed copies and stuff, could probably be intimidated into an actual settlement more easily...
Why ask about it on Slashdot? We'll all say information wants to be free and we don't believe in imaginary property. Oh, wait, you said big corporations are ripping off your stuff? OFF WITH THEIR HEADS1!!11!!1!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The "vendor" (it's a blog) isn't telling people to stay away from it, it's literally linked back to that dude's photostream and describes the license which means the vendor thinks they're following the license and doesn't think their blog is commercial use despite the ads. And he probably hasn't gotten a response back from the guy because he emailed him about a blog post that is titled Gone Fishin because the dude literally fucking left to go camping in the woods and included a photo of a hammock. Give me a break.
IANAL, but isn't that how stuff like trademarks work?
Trademarks work that way, but copyright doesn't.
The obvious thing would be to send them an invoice for a commercial license to your asset. Odds are, accounting will be more than happy to process it. No need to sue, or threaten to... Hell, you might just snag yourself a customer, if you are not careful for other assets too.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
You're missing the point. It's not about "being nice"; if you were really being nice you'd just release it into the public domain. If you're not willing to enforce the terms of a license, then it's the same as not using one. You can moan, "But I'm using Creative Commons!" all you want, but unless you sue, from the corporation's perspective it's the same as if the material had been public domain, since they're not seeing any consequences. Submitter is trying to have it both ways, all of the protections of copyright/licenses with none of the effort. It doesn't work that way.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
The summary states plain as day that the non-commercial CC license was used, so if the offenders weren't using his material in the furtherance of making a buck he wouldn't have a problem.