
Misuse of Creative Commons-licensed photo leads to public apology - edward
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/07/12/free-license-misuse-apology/
======
greggman
I ran into the issue that some TV show in the UK wanted to use a picture I
have on flickr that's marked CC-BY 2.0 (not SA). In other words attribution
required but not share alike.

Anyway, for me one point of sharing CC-BY is to just let people use the image
without asking. Of course lawyers got involved and the TV station contacted me
and said I needed to sign some contract so they could use my image for free
?!???!!

Sorry, I'm not going to sign some contract that I should have a lawyer look at
$$$ and that also puts me on the line for any legal issues in the photo that
comes up later especially when you aren't paying me. They moved on. Which is
fine by me but sad in general that they didn't just take the license as is

~~~
camperman
I had a similar incident with, strangely enough, Microsoft. It wanted to use
one of my photographs in promotional material and asked permission. I said
that permission had already been given by me in the form of a CC-BY and they
were very welcome to use it. It took quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing before
I got annoyed and said that if its legal counsel didn't understand licenses of
all things, then they probably should be fired.

~~~
mhurron
For things like promotional material, large companies will attempt to get
explicit, signed permission instead of relying on something simply thrown up
there on the web.

They understood the licensing just fine, they also understand covering their
ass explicitly. They don't feel like being left to your whims should you
choose to change license to attempt to extort money out of them after they
start a large campaign.

~~~
hh2222
How about some middle ground where the CC license says if you need explicit
written consent, you must compensate the artist for their troubles?

~~~
detaro
Doesn't need to be in the CC license. If they ask, you can just offer them an
alternative license that costs them, but gets them a signed piece of paper.
Putting "requests for clarification mean you have to pay" in a license sounds
like a bad idea.

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323454
I really dislike how the media will gladly take and use people's work without
credit and yet at the same time they pursue copyright infringement of their
cherished 70+ year old works like hounds at the track.

~~~
SixSigma
"the media" is a lot of different people and companies.

~~~
tamana
substitute Disney for "media" and the comment stands

~~~
Noos
Disney doing this is a net good, as it funds more projects. There are plenty
of public domain animated shorts and characters, but once out of copyright no
one seems to have any desire or incentive to protect or make new works from
them as opposed to bundle bad copies of them on dollar dvds.

~~~
dimal
Disney has lobbied (and succeeded) to have the copyright length extended every
time Mickey Mouse is coming up to it's copyright limit. Is it a net good when
a multibillion dollar corporation manipulates IP laws to further its own
interests? We've had our laws manipulated to protect a cartoon mouse.
Copyright was meant to be a short term guarantee that creators could profit
from their art, not an eternal claim of ownership.

~~~
jolux
>Copyright was meant to be a short term guarantee that creators could profit
from their art, not an eternal claim of ownership.

What's the precedent for that statement? What's your definition of short term?

~~~
J_Darnley
I don't know about the first part (and frankly I don't care) but my idea of
the second part is the same length as a patent: 20 years. 20 years after
publication all works irrevocably enter the public domain and are free for
everyone to use for all purposes. 20 years after death unpublished works also
enter the public domain or are ineligible for copyright. And the law that sets
this would state that all existing works now have just 20 years copyright.

------
hodgesrm
Open source license regimes are of dubious value unless there's visible case
law backing it up. It's great that Niccolo Caranti made the effort to defend
the Creative Commons license--this is a lot of effort regardless of whether
you recover legal costs.

(Personally I'll make double sure to attribute images from Wikipedia from here
on out.)

~~~
icebraining
_Open source license regimes are of dubious value unless there 's visible case
law backing it up._

The logic is backwards, though - if the license isn't valid, the default in
the law is to deny the use of the work.

~~~
dietrichepp
There are some cases where infringement was recognized but damages were $0
because that was the amount the creator would have earned for a licensed use.
Unless I'm remembering incorrectly.

~~~
tamana
Citation needed, that's patently absurd. Unless the damages were $0 PLUS
following the terms of the license (adding a statement of credit for BSD,
offering a download of the modified source for GPL etc)

In general, the remedy for violating a license is to _follow through on the
license agreement_.

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protomyth
I recently took video of an elevator fire in North Dakota[1] and posted it on
twitter. I was surprised by the number of messages I got asking if various
news folks could use the video.

Given this experience, I'm really surprised that this isn't more a of a
problem as media really seems to be going into the weeds to find video /
pictures of things. I also thought Twitter had some kind of statement in their
TOS about this. I wonder what the interaction between externally hosted things
with their licenses versus Twitter's TOS.

1) It was on my way home from work and I was parked for a bit

~~~
jsmthrowaway
You bet it's a problem, and it is a somewhat new trend on Twitter. Someone
blazed the trail and now every harried producer has a read-only Twitter
account and mimics it; it's a last-couple-of-years phenomenon. I appreciate
nothing more than coming across a grieving Twitter page showing photos of
horrors with a billion entry level producers underneath it clamoring for usage
rights like feeding sharks. This happened to you, it sounds like, and luckily
you were removed enough from the story that it was no big deal.

You might react and go "that's horrible, why would they do that?" but remember
when Cathriona White died, and every 'news' organization in the world
immediately (and I mean immediately) started calling her family demanding an
interview simply on the basis of her relationship with Jim Carrey? I seem to
recall someone in her family saying that they _heard_ about her death from a
reporter calling and asking for comment from a seven year old. He was pissed
about it and good for him, really, and I say that as someone who used to be in
a slightly more respectable part of that bloody industry.

Twenty four hour news and, later, the Internet did this to us (well, really,
_we_ did and these were merely tools to satiate human nature). There is zero
regard for "the right time" when interacting with subjects of stories any more
by most producers. The right time is now because our readers demand fast
content and fuck your feelings.

The irony is that Twitter is probably the one platform that is tirelessly
working to make a traditional journalist _go back to being traditional_ by
eliminating the urgency of reporting and shifting focus back to analysis and
context. So it's weird to watch producers work Twitter to basically digest a
primary source and be late by definition. Twitter is way better at telling me
what's going on now. I want analysis and context from journalists now, but
most haven't picked up on that yet. (This is also why Twitter will not
eliminate the media, despite what some people say; half of journalism is
placing events in context. Some might say half is a conservative estimate.)

And that's even before you get into the viral video agencies who snap up
rights from people who don't know any better, and I can't decide which is
worse. Seriously, what a way to make money; what service _do_ you provide,
exactly?

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JorgeGT
It's interesting how this keep happening when it is so easy to do it right. In
my case someone commented on my flickr that a startup was using one of my
photos without attribution, but it only took one email and the CEO/founder
immediately responded apologizing. Other times I've got emails asking me if it
was OK to use a photo, as if they had to seek permission.

I wonder if the problem is the need for more education/outreach to explain CC?

------
scotty79
Would BY-SA mean that article illustrated with that photo has to be also
published as BY-SA?

Same thing for a movie that has just a glimpse of this photo or a computer
game that displays it once?

~~~
sago
Case law on CC is very minimal so far [0], so this hasn't been explored in
court.

ShareAlike is intentionally copyleft, yes. But it isn't clear what would
constitute the 'derivative work'. If you had a glimpse of the photo in the
movie with a 'Ken Burns' effect, would releasing a CC 2 sec video of that
effect applied to the image be okay? Probably. But who knows if anyone would
succeed in suing you to either CC the whole film, or pay for another form of
license.

Is an article containing an image, used in its original form derivative?
Probably not, the Wikipedia citation creator explicitly gives you this option:
if you don't modify the image, only use it, then it doesn't prompt you to fill
out the derivative information. Obviously that's not in any way legally
binding, but gives an indication of how things tend to be used.

[0]
[https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law)

~~~
icebraining
There's plenty of case law regarding derivative works; it's not CC specific,
but why would it have to be? Either the license is valid or it's a straight-up
copyright infringement.

For example, there's case law regarding the use of a photo in a movie:
[http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-
factors/#...](http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-
factors/#too_small_for_fair_use_the_de_minimis_defense)

~~~
sago
You may have a much better knowledge than I (wouldn't be hard). But that
example doesn't quite answer the question. If a work _is_ derivative, what is
the extent of the derivative work, for the purpose of copyleft? Can you answer
that without specific case law on copyleft licenses?

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gaur
If you actually wanted people to use your work freely, you'd release it into
the public domain.

This incident shows that CC evangelists can be just as controlling and
litigious as the conventional copyright holders they inveigh against. So much
for making the world more equitable and accessible.

~~~
Donzo
I understand the spirit of your comment, but now seems like a good time to
quote this page that someone posted to HN a couple of months ago:

"Just as there is nothing in the law that permits a person to dump personal
property in the public highway, there is nothing that permits the dumping of
intellectual property into the public domain — except as happens in due course
when any applicable copyrights expire. Until those copyrights expire, there is
no mechanism in the law by which an owner of software can simply elect to
place it in the public domain."

[http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm](http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm)

~~~
dragonwriter
That's both perhaps true in a hypertechnical sense but largely false in
practical substance in the US; there are a number of legal principles (notably
promissory estoppel) which make the practical effect of a stated dedication to
the public domain by the creator very similar to what it says on the tin, even
if the creator technically retains copyright, as it becomes practically, if
not technically, impossible to enforce any of the exclusive rights under
copyright to restrict downstream actions like copying or creation and
distribution of derivative works after such a dedication.

~~~
Natanael_L
Not in all jurisdictions.

Funnily enough, it is Creative Commons Zero that does what is asked for the
best.

