Thread: Creative Commons licensing

In light of recent plagarism issues among belly dancers, I thought it might be a good thing to discuss Creative Commons licenses. A colleague told me about it when I was looking for stock photos for a work project.

Basically Creative Commons is a special license that lets you use other's work royalty free provided that you give credit.

More info: Licenses - Creative Commons

Anyway, I was doing an image search of belly dance on their search function to see what comes up. I found a picture of a child belly dancing at a hafla that my friend put on. That means someone could copy the picture and post it on their website with photo credit. Not cool.

So anyway, protect yourself, especially if you have a flickr account and are uploading photos. Make sure you always use the right license. Others who are more schooled in CC licenses please chirp in. I am clearly still a novice in this area.

Only if you choose to license your work that way. The link you posted is to a NON-PROFIT GROUP called Creative Commons and describes several license options you can CHOOSE to offer when you publish your work. Creative Commons is the name of the group, not a type of license.

Unless you state on your page that people can reproduce your work in exchange for attribution and/or a link (lots of clip art is offered this way), they cannot legally do so.

The pic you're talking about must have been licensed there by the photographer, who owns the rights? If not, I'd tell them their work is being offered on by a stock photo agency and they should look into it.

I tried to search for bellydance to see what came up & got nothing. Then it said this:

Please note that search.creativecommons.org is not a search engine, but rather offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent organizations. CC has no control over the results that are returned. Do not assume that the results displayed in this search portal are under a CC license. You should always verify that the work is actually under a CC license by following the link. Since there is no registration to use a CC license, CC has no way to determine what has and hasn't been placed under the terms of a CC license. If you are in doubt you should contact the copyright holder directly, or try to contact the site where you found the content.

So just because you found it using their search function doesn't mean they're offering the photo for use.

This is a good PSA. I think on Flickr, you have to "opt in" to Creative Commons licensing. Needless to say, it's important to know what you're getting yourself into if you click off on any of that stuff.

But jeez, I bet people who do stock photography for a living must be irate over Creative Commons. I've read a lot of articles about how ad agencies are trolling Flickr for free stock images now ,m::

Originally Posted by SatinWorship19

But jeez, I bet people who do stock photography for a living must be irate over Creative Commons. I've read a lot of articles about how ad agencies are trolling Flickr for free stock images now ,m::

Hey, if the stock photography people offered better photos, then maybe they wouldn't be concerned. Also, there is nothing wrong with trolling flickr looking for stock photos if you can use it for free based on their licensing.

Originally Posted by Lauren_

Only if you choose to license your work that way. The link you posted is to a NON-PROFIT GROUP called Creative Commons and describes several license options you can CHOOSE to offer when you publish your work. Creative Commons is the name of the group, not a type of license.

Unless you state on your page that people can reproduce your work in exchange for attribution and/or a link (lots of clip art is offered this way), they cannot legally do so.

The pic you're talking about must have been licensed there by the photographer, who owns the rights? If not, I'd tell them their work is being offered on by a stock photo agency and they should look into it.

Right, I'm saying some people who upload to flickr may not know they are offering the CC license and may be giving away their photos, so to speak. Right, so basically I'm alerting dancers who have flickr accounts to make sure that they use the correct license when they upload.

Also, if you know a photographer who's got pics up of you or other touchy pics, you could politely ask them to change their licensing and see if they would oblige.

Originally Posted by andalee-oriental

Right, I'm saying some people who upload to flickr may not know they are offering the CC license and may be giving away their photos, so to speak. Right, so basically I'm alerting dancers who have flickr accounts to make sure that they use the correct license when they upload.

Also, if you know a photographer who's got pics up of you or other touchy pics, you could politely ask them to change their licensing and see if they would oblige.

Gotcha. I think it's spelled out pretty clearly through Flikr, but always good to have a heads-up.