How to Properly Attribute a Creative Commons Licensed Photo

In my last article, I described the power of Creative Commons (CC) licensing and how to use it to your advantage to find high quality pictures to make your blog or website more compelling. In order to take advantage of the vast collection of freely distributable CC content you can find on sites like Flickr, however, you need to attribute that content back to the author, and describe the license that the author has granted for that piece of content. According to CreativeCommons.org, that license will fall into one of four categories, or a combination :

"Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give credit the way you request.

Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike: You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Note: A license cannot feature both the Share Alike and No Derivative Works options. The Share Alike requirement applies only to derivative works."

So now you understand perfectly what to do when you use a CC licensed photo in your blog, right? No? Well, allow me to give you an example. Let's say you go to Flickr and search their Creative Commons section. You find that adorable picture of a cat dangling from a screen door that would be perfect for Fluffy's blog. Now what? You have to properly attribute the photo.

How do you do that? Well, according to Creative Commons, if you are using the work without making any changes to it, then you must "keep intact any copyright notices," credit the author, and provide the URL back to CreativeCommons.org pointing to the license selected. If you are altering the picture (making "derivative use"), then you need to identify that your photo is a derivative work, ie. 'Photo based on [original work] by [author]."

The best place to do all of this for a photo is in a caption just beneath that cutesy picture of the kitty. If the author specified how you should credit her, be sure to use her language. Otherwise, the caption should begin with something like "Photo by [author]." If you got your picture from Flickr, link back from the name of the photo's author to their Flickr profile page. And don't forget to link back to the Creative Commons page for the license you're using, ie. "Photo by [author] (License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs)."

If this seems like a fair amount of work to create the proper attribution, that's because it is, but hey, you're getting free creative for your website. And in my next post, I'll give you some tips for automating the process of creating these captions in Drupal. In the meantime, good hunting!