Using Flickr Photo’s to Illustrate Posts - Creative Commons Aware!
If you follow my personal blog, you’ll be aware that I’ve been keen to get a plugin that will allow me to insert Flickr photo’s to my blog posts, this all started when I read Skellie’s guide to using Incredible Flickr Images using images licensed under the Creative Commons license.
I wasn’t the only one and there were some half solutions around in the form of:
- J @ The Glass is Too Big’s prototype.
- EmoRate’s Photo Comment Tool.
Then Michael posted about Photo Dropper, it’s a fantastic tool that does exactly what I need.
For example, let’s have a look for elephants:
photo credit: exfordy
And a fox using a computer:
See, it’s great - that all took 2 - 3 seconds.
But Wait!
ProPhotographer posted a comment on Anne’s blog (where we’ve been discussing the plugin), about how this plugin could spell a whole host of trouble for Wordpress publishers who are less aware!
If you are using this plugin, you should make yourself aware of a few things in ProPhotographer’s post, because you’ll have no comeback on the plugin if you get into any copyright trouble - their disclaimer covers them.
I’d do a couple of things:
|
 photo credit: laihiu |
Is your blog commercial?
If it’s running adverts it could probably be described as commercial in my opinion at least, but ProPhotogapher does point out that:
That said, magazines are classed in the stock world as “Editiorial use” and you don’t need releases for editorial (supporting articles) use. Most blog images just illustrate the concept or message behind the post (like the ones I have inserted) so even though I have ads running - the posts are actually editorial comment.
The problem will come on those blogs specifically designed to sell something. A lot of webmasters are using Wordpress nowadays as its easier to get to grips with, and get a site up and running, than learning HTML from scratch. On these sites the choice of image will be crucial. Like I suggested; a site selling ringtomnes and featuring an unreleased image of a recognisable teenager on a phone would be hard pressed to say the image is not endorsing their product.
The big bottom line is:
If you use an image in a commercial context featuring a person, or a piece of property that needs a release for commercial use and you don’t have one then you’re a law-suit waiting to happen.
Remember that people!!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The license issue is why I set the default settings to CC-BY on my prototype. I wanted to do as much as possible to make sure people wouldn’t accidentally do the wrong thing.
I couldn’t agree more… My bigger concern was the situation where a photographer has submitted a photo to Flickr, given it attribution license, but not got the models permission?
[...] Added: Please see Keiron’s great post about commercial blogs and copyright. [...]
[...] may remember a while back we discussed the ability to use a Wordpress plugin to find Flick Photos for your [...]
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