Proving Creative Commons Licensing of a Work? 105
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."
Good question. (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Other Considerations (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:Other Considerations (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?
Re:Other Considerations (Score:4, Insightful)
Once you've bumped into a few glitches on things that are supposed to be obvious but aren't, you realize it is much easier to CYA now than to SYA (Save YA) later. An ounce of prevention and such...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Too bad the real world doesn't always work that way. I've been lucky enough to work with a number of lawyers (they're my clients, fortunately I'm not their client!). One thing I've learned is that you can be sued for almost anything. They don't have to have good firm grounds. You can be sued and be completely innocent and still spend tens of thousands to prove you're innocent.
It's much easier, as I said, in the long run, to do a little work up front. 95% of the time it's
Re:Other Considerations (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, reminds of the lovely philosophers' saying, "In theory there is no difference between theory and reality, but in reality there is."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Yogi Berra did. And it actually goes "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying a baseball player can't also be a philosopher...? If you read enough of his quotes I think you'll find he was as much a modern day philosopher as anyone.
Thanks for the correction of the quote though, I'm sure that saved quite a few people, (like me
Re: (Score:2)
Some quotes:
"He must have made that before he died." (about a movie with Steve McQueen in it)
"If you can't imitate him, don't copy him."
"I take a two hour nap, from one o'clock to four."
"I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."
Yep. The man is definitely up there with John Stuart Mill, Alan Turing, Aristotle, Charles Dodgson, and Rene Descartes.
Quick quote from Wikipedia: Philosophy concerns itself with what is the best way to live (ethics), what sorts of things re
Re: (Score:1)
Ayn Rand and Fuller? Barf.
Names strongly associated with
Re: (Score:2)
You may not like Rand or Fuller, but they dealt with appropriate topics. Rand did deal with what she felt was right and wrong and Fuller did write on what he felt the nature of the Universe and mankind were and proposed ideas of how we should handle some aspects of life. You may not classify them at the same level as some, but t
Re: (Score:1)
Seriously, your statement is one large fallacy.
Oh I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had to be famous to be considered a philosopher now. Everybody thinks of philosophical topics. Everybody thinks
Re: (Score:2)
Enjoy your bland, pseudo-intellectual pap.
Re: (Score:2)
One of at least two things will happen:
1. The court believes the other person instead of you. Civil trials are not "proof beyond a reasonable doubt
Re: (Score:2)
No, he means that unless you can prove that the photo was released by the copyright owner by CC, the license is meaningless. I could scan a photo from a magazine and slap a CC license on it, but that does not mean that I had the right to do that.
If you are going to profit on others work based on rights granted to
Re: (Score:2)
If someone is faking the CC license, chances are they are impersonating the author. Fat lot of good checking with that guy will do you.
The problem that you are trying to address is the copyright-induced belief that an artist should retain control over his creation once it has been published. The useful Creati
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
i'd imagine most people would be far more reluctant to sign a statement knowing they had no right to do so than to slap a similar notice on a website.
Re: (Score:2)
The story is that Ligeti was pissed, so Kubrick invited him to a private screening of the film, before its release. After seeing the context in which Kubrick used Atmosphères, Ligeti turned around 180 and gave the film his blessing.
</nit>
Re: (Score:2)
Can you verify or do you have any strong degree of confidence of the accuracy? I recall reading what I said, but forgot the source, since it was over 20 years ago.
Welcome to Copyright! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, copyrights and patents are for promoting the arts and the sciences. If you're doing neither, you deserve neither. This post does neither, and should not be copyrighted. If you can't afford the registration fee (which should be kept to a token fee of $5 or so for the purpose of showing that you care, not for the government's profit) then flip burgers between sli
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
$5 for what? If I'm a photographer on a photo shoot and take 500 pictures (no clue if this is an accurate number, but I do know that they take *a lot*, especially now with digital), is that $5 for the whole bunch, or do I have to pay $2500 (or pick out my f
Re: (Score:1)
1 image is 5$.
1000 images is 5000$.
Programs can put images together into one massive image.
1 massivo-image-the-size-of-5000 5$.
I betcha the copyright office wouldnt like that one
"He violated my copyright at (5300px,0px to 5900px,600px)" (booo)
Re: (Score:2)
Sharing knowledge is of far greater value than sticking carrots in front of jackasses, as they support the pigopolists in the mistaken belief that they will be multimillionaires, rather than people who will just be demeaned and humiliated for the pleasure of the publishing executi
Re: (Score:2)
Meh. Originality merely means that it isn't copied from someone else and that it has a modicum of creativity. It's easier to disprove than to prove. Similarly, copyright is concerned with promoting science (it's patents that are concerned with promoting the useful arts), but since 's
Re: (Score:2)
The fee can simply be derived from the cost of implementing the system, user pays, the copyrightists want it, then let them pay for it as well as for the full cost of enforcing it and leave us creative commons copyleftists out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
So if Alice writes a poem, and later on Bob writes an identical poem, both poems are independently copyrightable, so long as Bob didn't copy his poem from Alice. The fact that they're identical doesn't matter at all.
So how does a computer check this?
And that's text, which would be easy to put into a computer.
Also, people who use CC or the GPL, or whatever, are
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but what if it wasn't $5 per domain, it was $5 per distinct object instead? If you have a web site with 100 pages, and each page has 20 objects (HTML, animated GIFs, style sheets, etc.) that is now $10,000 to register the whole kit and kaboodle. Is it still casually affordable now?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
. How do I prove that the material I am trying to copyright is mine to copyright? If I cut and pasted it off of a web site, especially one that wasn't indexed somewhere, how could they tell?
. What happens when I sue you for posting my copyrighted material on slashdot? How do you prove that you originally wrote it in the first place, and that yo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How is that any different from the current system?
Your whole argument about establishing authorship applies just as much today as it would under a registration scheme. At least with a registration scheme, there is the date o
Re: (Score:1)
I hate to break the news, but you're too late with this idea.
I've already patented it.
Re: (Score:2)
What happens when I sue you for posting my copyrighted material on slashdot? How do you prove that you originally wrote it in the first place, and that you didn't copy it from me? (I put it on my web site and modified the datestamps to make it look like it predated yours by a few days)
This alone would make a system where $2 is nowhere near enou
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are advantages to something automatically being considered copyrighted once it is created. Granted, those advantages are only for the creator, but without help like that, there is less motivation to create.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that the lack of million-dollar commissions also results in "less motivation to create" -- the point being that, while the purpose of granting copyright monopolies is ostensibly to encourage the sciences and "useful" arts, one does eventually reach a point of diminishing returns, both in terms of the amount of art and science created, and in terms of the utility of that increased amount. There is no need for the government to supply unli
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, as a small business person, even though I haven't had to use this fact yet (and hope I never do!), I am quite thankful that my work is copyrighted when I write it, and not when I submit it for copyright. When I
Re: (Score:2)
Spoken like someone who uses copyrighted material, but certainly not like someone who creates it.
There are advantages to something automatically being considered copyrighted once it is created. Granted, those advantages are only for the creator, but without help like that, there is less motivation to create.
There is also an advantage to being able to create content with worry that you are stepping on someone's copyright claims. If I wanted to publish a best of Slashdot quote series, it would be utterly impossible to do so short of stealing Slashdot's server. All of the posts are automatically copyrighted and there is absolutely no way to get in contact with the authors of most of the posts. You could NEVER EVER legally make such a book in our current fucked up and broken system because at any time someone
One size does not fit all! (Score:2)
Slap in a fee of a couple bucks to register copyrighted content
Word count of average novel = ~100,000
Word count of average haiku = ~12
Average Hollywood budget = $xx,000,000
Average novel budget = ~$15,000 (assuming 6 months equivalent to college-educated wage bracket) Average haiku budget = ~$5 (including paper tissues and fizzy drinks)
Now, I may not like haikus in English -- they only sound right rythmically in Japanese, which I don't understand -- but some people do. The point here is that it i
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you want your post to be free, you are more than welcome to add a note as such in your sig.
If I write a short story for a creative writing class, I may not see it as of commercial use, so I hand it in without registering. So should my teacher or any of my classmates be entitled to rip off my plot, just because he/she was the one who identified a market? It was still me that wrote it -- it's still my work.
HAL.
Re: (Score:2)
The point of copyright is not to ensure that artist get money. The point of copyright, and this is written in black and white in the constitution, is
Re: (Score:2)
If someone with more motivation turns around and actually CREATES something for public consumption
But if you look at my example, the person registering it has CREATED nothing, just released someone else's creation.
Now what if someone wants to create something for public consumption, but doesn't want paid for it -- eg an Apache developer? (Slashdot runs on Apache, doesn't it?) Why should he have to pay to ensure that it gets protected by the GPL and prevent unscrupulous software vendors rebranding it as
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, if Apache can't scrounge up 5 dollars to copyright their code, they have much bigger worries then someone stealing it and selling it for profit. Apache wouldn't have to change a
Re: (Score:2)
Every minor change is a derivative work, and if a malicious third party downloads a +0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1b change from sourceforge for any given project and registers it, the project's in deep doo-doo, so the project has to reregister every single time a source change becomes available.
Even if every FLOSS project could afford $5 for every single incremental change, can you image how soon the copyright registry would collapse if Sourceforge automatically submitted every upload for registration? "Sourceforging" w
Re: (Score:2)
However I think you trivialise the opposition to this type of change when you say:
If you go to a forum used by small content p
Re: (Score:2)
With an international agency? Who wil pay for it? Where will it be located? How are registrations to be sent?
With national agencies? Which one then? The US one because
How will you verify that the registrant is the real owner? What happens if someone spots unregistered content and starts registering it?
A simpler solution would be to require a copyright notice and a statement stat
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, no, implicate copyright does not keep you from claiming my post as your own. You can still copy my post in the current system and claim it as your
Is a registrar needed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps there needs to be a 3rd-party registrar where people can submit their material under particular licenses? It would be a great service for anyone looking for CCed material regardless, and could help to assure people licensing the material that they have someone to go to if there's a dispute.
Admittedly, this is patterned after the WGA's registry [wga.org], only this version would be transparent-- that is, a registered material would be visible after it's uploaded.
Of course, validating that the submitter is in fact the original copyright owner is another issue, but that's not what the original topic was asking. (An interesting question though-- how do you know that someone who says "this song is distributed under the CC license" really owns the right to do this? Then again, the same issues all apply to the GPL. Is there a CC sourceforge?)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Nobody knows. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Been A Problem on Wikimedia Commons (Score:3, Interesting)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLick
which we then flag and they are uploaded to the commons. Eric knows his program has scanned all the correctly licensed photos - and it has came down to the situation that if a Flickr author asks wikimedia to remove them we may - but we don't have to - we have the program logs and we can prove that they were uploaded at one point under a cc licence, no matter what the Flickr page now says.
For pictures uploaded to wikimedia commons by individual users the situation is a little more blurred. There is now a situation in place where a bot checks most of the pictures and cetifies they are under the correct licence - but that is pretty recent and so there are quite a few older ones which have had licence changes and they just have to be removed as we have no way of proving they once were CC.
In short, at wikimedia commons there has been a major drive to cover our backs to be able to prove that something was uploaded under CC. If an author later changes licences and asks the commons to remove then in most cases we will oblige, but we are now in a position to refuse if we need to (such as a very useful picture etc). I think some folks on the commons got in touch with the folks at Flickr and have tried to persuade them to show a history of licences and there would be no further problems - but so far they haven't obliged.
Re: (Score:2)
If they even track license change history, that would be very useful. In the other hand, if they don't currently track and retain history on things like that, it could well represent a non-trivial amount of work for them to start.
Re: (Score:2)
Metadata, In Part (Score:2)
Some types of media support metadata, and Creative Commons has the means for putting license metadata in such media. See the Creative Commons Tools [creativecommons.org] and Developer [creativecommons.org] Wiki pages for details.
That doesn't cover situations where the media lacks metadata, either because the format doesn't support metadata or the metadata is missing. It also doesn't protect you against claims that you injected the CC metadata against the wishes of a non-CC-using copyright owner. I don't see where the CC metadata includes any sort o
It's a little more complicated (Score:2)
Check with an attorney in your state if you want a full analysis.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Flickr (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
If the website has that set as default and the creator didn't check, can you argue that the creator didn't place it under the license? Is the creator SOL because of those few moments where someone might have snagged it? I don't think that one could pr
Re: (Score:2)
If you make a mistake here, your pro designation isn't really worth much, is it?
Re: (Score:2)
public key cryptography and signatures (Score:3, Interesting)
What is needed is a system to attach metadata containing CC licenses signed by the original author using public key crypto. That way you can irrefutably prove that a particular person licensed a particular file under a particular license. This does not solve the issue of trusting whether that person has the right to so license that work but one could imagine a reputation system (Bob has asserted that 10 Britney Spears songs are CC so no one trusts him anymore) or perhaps legal consequences for making a fraudulent representation.
CC Office (Score:2)
The trickier part would be tracking derivations. So, if you resize a photo that's been CC licensed, the signature no longer matches. I could probably convinced that the person doing the resizing should keep a copy of the original, but that could leave people with a legit license but no proof.
It would be neat to have something analogous to the Copyright Office - the Creative Commons Office. This could be a non-profit responsible for tracking copyright o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would have thought a CC registry would be a good project for Bitzi.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on the picture (Score:1)
Suggestion for a service documenting usage/ripping (Score:2)
Content certification timestamps (Score:1)
and a statement of the license terms. These need to use digital signature technology
so that they cannot be repudiated.
The idea would be that if you want to license your content under a create commons license,
then you submit the file of that content to a license certifying server.
A well-known repository of such content (or a search engine setting in google) could
then find all the content that had been so certified.
And you
WebCite to the rescue. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
pdf? (Score:2)
you could print to PDF, and use acrobats signature tool to indicate date and time with a checksum
if you modified the page, it would invalidate the 'signature' stamp.. if nothing else it would be proof that that verison
existed at that date and time.. wouldn't it?
Some definitions (Score:2)
Beg the question [reference.com].
Editor [reference.com].
Re: (Score:1)