Creeva’s World 2.0

Pic­ture from here.

Look­ing at my access logs on the site I noticed a refer­ral from this page.  At the top of the page it stated this:

Blogged with­out per­mis­sion to: http://creeva.com/2008/08/08/i-cant-link-to-your-web-site-man-your-retarded/.

Now my first instinct was “What the Hell”, I then checked and ver­i­fied this came up under a cre­ative com­mons search and made a screen­shot.

Now under cre­ative com­mons that applic­a­ble (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs) (I searched to see what was allowed to do to the image after this came up) it states:

Under the fol­low­ing conditions:

• Attri­bu­tion. You must attribute the work in the man­ner spec­i­fied by the author or licen­sor (but not in any way that sug­gests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

  Attribute this work:

  
  What does “Attribute this work” mean?

  The page you came from con­tained embed­ded licens­ing meta­data, includ­ing how the cre­ator wishes to be attrib­uted for re-use. You can use the HTML here to cite the work. Doing so will also include meta­data on your page so that oth­ers can find the orig­i­nal work as well.

• Non­com­mer­cial. You may not use this work for com­mer­cial pur­poses.
• No Deriv­a­tive Works. You may not alter, trans­form, or build upon this work.

I did copy (well I linked to the photo on Flickr) and I dis­trib­uted the work because it was embed­ded in a blog post.

The con­di­tions:

Attri­bu­tion — I fol­lowed the norm for cre­ative com­mons licensed Flickr images which is to link to enclos­ing page where the pic­ture is from.   No other con­di­tions were spec­i­fied by the cre­ator, so I took the indus­try norm for such usage.

Non­com­mer­cial - Though some­day I would like to get paid, my blog is a non-commercial work and I would tes­tify under oath and in court that my blog has never net­ted a sin­gle penny into my bank account, into my pocket, and in any tan­gi­ble mean­ing­ful way.

No deriv­a­tive work — when speak­ing of the image I did not alter, trans­form, or build upon the image in any way.

Using this image like I did I was well within my legal rights.  I left this com­ment on the page:

You know you stated that this was blogged with­out per­mis­sion to my site on the page http://creeva.com/2008/08/08/i-cant-link-to-your-web-site-man-your-retarded/

The prob­lem with this is that you released your photo under cre­ative com­mons.  For all my posts I only seach for flickr pho­tos licensed via cre­ative com­mons, just so I can use images legally.

I clearly under­neath the photo linked back to this page which is attri­bu­tion — I didn’t obfus­cate, nor did I claim it was my orig­i­nal image.  If any­thing it was to help drive traf­fic back to your site since I didn’t want attri­bu­tion given to me any way shape or form.

Now I don’t mind the fact that you state it’s blogged with­out per­mis­sion, but this comes down to the fact that you licensed your photo under cre­ative com­mons orig­i­nally, and you don’t seem to under­stand the rights you’ve given up by this.  I’m not using this com­mer­cially, so I am within my right.

Please see this flickr search:

http://flickr.com/search/?q=Kitty+Reindeer&l=cc&ss=0&ct=0&w=all

and you can ver­ify that this image is listed under cre­ative com­mons use — or see this screen­shot http://flickr.com/photos/creeva/2909390861/

Under more in depth searches — you are not allow­ing com­mer­cial use of this pho­to­graph, which I am not doing.   You are also not allow­ing any­one to mod­ify, adapt, or build upon — which I also am not doing.

Also though Flickr allows you to remove a cre­ative com­mons license legally once some­thing is released under cre­ative com­mons it’s eter­nally released and irrevocable.

While my first instinct was to remove this image I’m let­ting it stand because of the license you chose regard­less of your under­stand­ing of the license.

If the cre­ator had con­tacted me in any way shape or form this may have been a dif­fer­ent issue and I may changed the image (at least on this site I don’t know if I could catch every­where I cross­post to).   Now how­ever since I am a firm and hard believed in pub­lic domain and cre­ative com­mons rights for cre­ators, it’s become a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple.  If some­one doesn’t under­stand what cre­ative com­mons is, they shouldn’t use it oth­er­wise they will loose rights that they thought they had.  I did not pub­lish this in a book and made no com­mer­i­cal prof­its off htis image.  I fol­lowed the license as it was writ­ten and intended.   If the cre­ator didn’t under­stand those rights, well that’s another issue.