I like to think I am very conscious of copyright. I might not always adhere to it in my person life (who can claim they do these days?!) but professionally, everything is done strictly legitimately. With that in mind... Am I the only person who is slightly uncomfortable with the phrasing around PD and CC0? With other copyright licenses there is somebody there is saying they own something.
I'm particularly uncomfortable with Flickr's "no known copyright restrictions". What if people infer PD from that and upload it somewhere else under CC0? Then it gets sucked into this finda.photo? Yuck.
As for finda.photo, why are you truncating the source down to just a domain name?! Many of the sources include proper uploader details so why aren't you copying those over and displaying them?
I know you're not required to, but attribution isn't a bad thing if you can give it. I for one would be much happier using a photo if I knew exactly where it came from.
One of the challenges I have with attribution generally--and, to be clear, I try to be very careful with attribution on any CC, etc. photos that I use--is that the attribution is usually detached from the photo. (It may be stored in the metadata--or not.) So, even though I make a point of cutting & pasting the flickr links when I'm putting together a presentation, it's very easy for the attribution text and the photo to become separated on subsequent use.
There are potential ways that you could fix this from a technology perspective, e.g. have a process to create a new JPEG with the credit below the original photo. But anything like this is going to be a bit clunky and potentially ugly graphically.
There are fields within the JPEG file itself for this information, called IPTC fields. I know they can be read with photo-specific software like Photo Mechanic or Photoshop, but they seem incredibly under-used by the Internet in general. They're perfect for a use case like persistent attribution, but few image software services seem to know about or expose them.
I agree these are under-used but they face the same issues as the other methods like putting the data in text near the image on a web page or presentation slide. These fields, same as all Exif metadata, can be overwritten or removed by anyone with access to the file. The data can be faked by someone intending to deceive, or it could disappear when posted to big sites like Facebook or Twitter who routinely remove Exif data by default (presumably to protect the majority who don't understand how GPS tagging works on mobile phone photos, etc).
Once the photo metadata is gone, it is too easy for others to claim it is an 'orphan work' and avoid liability under copyright law. At the opposite end of the spectrum, people like me who release most images as CC0 are annoyed that that license tag was stripped from the metadata, preventing others from freely reusing them. I use and rely on Exif tags a lot but they are fragile and you cannot rely on them staying embedded with your images once they hit the web.
The data can be faked or deleted within IPTC fields, of course.
What IPTC fields have over the typical ways of handling attribution is that they are not left behind when the image file is copied--so they should be more resistant to accidental removal of attribution metadata.
On most websites, the attribution is a line of text that is displayed next to the image. Anyone copying the image, who wishes to preserve attribution, must also separately copy the attribution text. Then they need a way to store that text, and keep it associated with the image. Not easy, actually!
> Once the photo metadata is gone, it is too easy for others to claim it is an 'orphan work' and avoid liability under copyright law.
You cannot avoid liability this way. Under the law, it is the responsibility of the person using an image to know that they have the right to use it. Just claiming "I thought it was orphaned" does not work if you are being sued by the actual image rightsholder.
> I use and rely on Exif tags a lot but they are fragile and you cannot rely on them staying embedded with your images once they hit the web.
Yes, this is my point! They're fragile because web services don't preserve them--but theoretically they could.
The cynical side of me thinks that a lot of web services don't want to know all the rights data for the media they carry. Ignoring rights gets them more traffic and engagement, and under the relevant law (the DMCA), they are allowed to. All they have to do is remove infringing images when the rights holder requests it.
Right. In an ideal world you'd be using a bunch of CC content in a presentation, the appropriate IPTC fields would be filled in, and you could press a button and a block of credit text would be generated. (That's primarily about CC-BY I realize.) In practice, it's an incredibly manual process that I'm guessing most people don't follow and, even for those who try to, it probably breaks down more often than not.
Then there are all the issues with the NC and ND license variants and what they even mean exactly. But that's another rant.
EDIT: I'd just add that clearing rights and giving credits have been an issue for ever. On more than one occasion, I've gotten a semi-panicky email (and I think once actually a phonecall in pre-email days) securing permission to use one of my photos that was clearly on the verge of going into production. Presumably, someone came along and asked "You do have rights to this, correct?"
If you look underneath each photo, there's a link back to each original page, as well as a link to the photographer's URL of choice (depending on the source this might be their profile on Unsplash, or their own website).
Do you remember which image you're referring to? I haven't changed either the image data or the site code since your comment, so I'm curious to know which one it is and if I can update it.
These CC0 silos are quite risky to use in a professional context.
They often collect images en masse from a bunch of sources without further inspection. If someone uploads a copyrighted image to these sources and marks them CC0, they will end up in these CC0 aggregators. And, if your use of this image is discovered, you will be held liable for the damage caused by your action (well, at least here in Sweden).
I would do some research before using these images in a professional context. Look up the photographer and confirm that the image is a work of her/him. If this site included proper uploader details, it would make this work easier.
I'm particularly uncomfortable with Flickr's "no known copyright restrictions". What if people infer PD from that and upload it somewhere else under CC0? Then it gets sucked into this finda.photo? Yuck.
As for finda.photo, why are you truncating the source down to just a domain name?! Many of the sources include proper uploader details so why aren't you copying those over and displaying them?
I know you're not required to, but attribution isn't a bad thing if you can give it. I for one would be much happier using a photo if I knew exactly where it came from.