Skip to main content

I’m releasing my photos under a CC license

I’d been planning to do this for some time now but never got around to it.

Everyone assumes that bloggers will use any image they find, be it through Google or from the story’s original source or whatever. I know I do. I also know that when other blogs repost myoriginal stories they use my photos, and I’m quite happy to have them do it.

But I also want to be proactive in this so I’m going to release all the photos under a CC-BY-NC license. Basically anyone can use the photos for any non commercial purpose so long as they give me attribution. And in case you were wondering a blog post with adverts on the same page is _not_ a commercial purpose, so bloggers can indeed use the images.

P.S. If anyone thinks this is a bad idea, please let me know.

Similar Articles


Comments


Doug September 23, 2010 um 2:19 pm

I’m not a fan of Creative Commons. Yeah, it gives you the "I’m doing a good thing" aura, but from a practical point of view it’s somewhere between useless and harmful.

It’s useless because the user still needs to contact the supplier before using the material. There are at least two reasons for this.

First, the CC licenses explicitly deny that the supplier warranties that they have any right to the material in the first place, nor that they have obtained the necessary clearance rights for the content (such as model releases).

Second, there is no way for the user to show, much less prove, what license was available and used. Let’s say you put up a photo with a CC license, and I grab it to use on my weblog within the terms of the CC-BY-NC license. A year from now, you change the licensing terms to one requiring royalties. My weblog continues to display your photo. Q1: am I automatically in violation, since the CC licenses don’t license in perpetuity? Q2: how can I show that when I grabbed the photo, it was under a CC-BY-NC license?

As a user, I need something from the creator that affirms that they have the right to supply the content, that all subsidiary clearances have been obtained, and that specifies which license is being used and how long that license applies for my usage.

A CC license can be harmful from the viewpoint of the creator because you lose control over your work. There are a number of non-commercial organizations that *I* wouldn’t want my work associated with.


Mike Cane September 23, 2010 um 3:34 pm

Frankly, the permutations of CC give me a freakin headache. I have a bunch of photos of writers taken from various venues I was thinking of contributing in similar fashion, but the hassle is too much for me to deal with and since I made the effort to get the photos, no one else should run them before I do.


Nic Boshart September 23, 2010 um 5:44 pm

I think it’s a great idea. There are always people who are going to use your ideas in unintended ways, but more often then not it’s good, or at least funny. I’ve got the same license on my crappy comic blog. It’s the internet! You’re creating something to contribute to the noise, not to horde and protect. Why not make it as easy as possible to spread around?


But is it piracy? September 28, 2010 um 11:38 am

[…] don’t care that they copied the video (that’s why I announced a CC licence on my photos last week), and I know that I’m not alone in this. For all we know Activision doesn’t want to […]


Write a Comment