The Problem With Creative Commons Attribution

Like many an amateur photographer, I use flickr, 500px and a number other websites to share my portfolio both with friends, family and acquaintances - as well as the world at large. I have no problem with people using many of my images (including the one featured above) which I why I often post these with a Creative Commons Attribution licence. The problem I have is when the images are re-used, without attribution.

After recently discovering that Google Images allows you to search for duplicates of images on the web, I decided to go through some of the more popular shots from my flickr stream and see if any of them where being used anywhere... boy did I get a surprise! Many of my shots were being used around the web on sites from small personal blogs, to corporate sites and motorsports related media sites.

Part of me was excited to see the shots being used around the web, which is part of the reason I published them under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. I thought it would be interesting to see where and how the shots were being used, so started clicking through to the various sites using my images.

That's when things started to change.

Some of the sites we're correctly attributing the images, with most of those even linking through to my flickr stream (list of those below under my "fame file"), however other sites, many commercial websites, had offered no attribution at all, nor linked through to the source (listed under "shame file" below).

So how is it that these sites could use my images without any sort of attribution? Is it the end-client (presumably the business the site has been built for) or the web "developer" who is to blame?

By day, I work for Digital Hive, a full service digital agency, where we are constantly (among other things) building commercial websites for a vast array of clients. We understand the rules with creative commons, royalty free, rights managed and other licencing models - not because we have nothing better to do, but rather because we need to know how these models work to ensure we correctly inform clients when it comes to which images they can/can't use and what the requirements of this use are (attribution, payment, etc).

Should I bother persuing this any further? I know that what they have done is wrong, and that a simple attribution for the images is all that's required to fix things - but is it likely that people who were willing to acquire and publish my photographs in an inappropriate manner such as this are naive enough that they would simply ignore any communications sent to them?

As mentioned above, I've decided to name and shame both those who have correctly attributed things (thanks!) and those who haven't (for the sake of it, they get a rel="nofollow" as they don't deserve the google juice).

"The Famed"

(aka the good guys - those who correctly attributed my photos - thankyou)

	Secrets of a check shirt! (okwave.jp)
	Why/How Humans got Smart (neurobrainstorm.com)
	Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit (wikipedia.org)
	Esukirusutta (ja.wikipedia.org)
	10 Reasons Melbourne Rules for Oz Holidays (dealchecker.co.uk)
	RFID Tracking Being Examined for Maple Syrup Production Improvements (supplychainer.com)
	Major Bank No Longer Accepting Third Party Underwriting (aka pmi) (raincityguide.com)
	How to Make Toast (squidoo.com)
	How to Make Peanut Butter Banana Toast (wikihow.com) - although it takes a lot of digging to find the attribution
	Breakfast for Vegetarians (mum.edu)
	17 ways to eat toast (grainsofearth.com)
	Woodworking Projects (shedyourbuilder.com)
	The Mornington Peninsula Beach Box Association (mpbba.org.au)
The following entries seem to have corrected their ways since the original post - thanks guys!
	Review of the Froth au Lait Professional Milk Frother (tching.com)
	Delonghi Espresso (espressodelonghi.com)

"The Shamed"

(aka the bad guys - those who used but failed to attribute my photos)

	Valentino Rossi – MotoGP Champion (5starmotorsports.net)
	Arico Coffee (aricocoffee.com.au)
	Peter Baskerville's Answers about Espresso (quora.com)
	Freydd milk for espresso (kaffitar.is)
	Wie Sie Ihre Arbeit erledigt bekommen, Häppchen für Häppchen (waterclearmind.com)