How to correctly attribute 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 images to make your blog or website more compelling. In order to benefit from the extensive collection of freely distributable CC content can be found on sites like Flickr, however, that the content you need to give back to the author, and describe the license that the author has granted for that piece of content. According CreativeCommons.org, this 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.

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

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

Note: The license can not offer both the Share Alike and No Derivative Works options. The Share Alike requirement applies only to derivative works. "

So now you understand exactly what to do when using a CC-licensed photos in your blog, right? No? Well, let me give you an example. Let's say you go to Flickr and look for their section of Creative Commons. You can find that photo of an adorable cat dangling from a screen door that would be perfect for Fluffy blog. Now what? You must attribute the photo properly.

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

The best place to do it all for a photo is in a caption below that picture just cutesy kitten. If you would like the author stated his credit, be sure to use its language. Otherwise, the caption should start with something like "Photo by [Author]". If you have your Flickr photos, back link to the name of the photo to his Flickr profile. And do not forget to link back to the page for Creative Commons license you are using, for example. "Photo by [Author] (License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works)."

If this seems like a good deal of work to create the proper attribution, it is because it is, but hey, you're getting free creative for your site. And in my next post, I'll give you some tips to automate the process of creating these captions in Drupal. Meanwhile, good hunting! ......