The thing about posting things on the web is that you’re publishing to a world-wide audience of everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know, and if you happen to include in your slides a photo of someone, there’s a chance that someone who knows that person will see it, and they will probably mention it to that person…
nickhacks alerted me that he saw one of my photos… I asked if the presentation he saw it in was available online somewhere, as I wanted to see it as well.
He gave me a link, which wasn’t the actual presentation, but gave me enough info to find presentations by the speaker…
And there it is. Slide 108. A photo I created, and published on Flickr with a Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike License. It’s a pretty liberal license. It allows people to copy, share, and adapt the work, but it does require that you attribute the work to the creator… you know, give credit to the person who created it. It’s really simple. I even have a nice explanation on my Flickr profile page. So for instance, if you used my photo in a presentation, you might list the attribution part on a “credits” page at the end. This is pretty common in presentations nowadays…
Skip to the end of this specific presentation and the last page presents credits. The only attribution I could find was a blanket “all from whom I borrowed material” which was a little disappointing. But even more disappointing is that right there, on the last slide, on the bottom, is a Creative Commons logo, which licenses the slides under the “Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike” license… the very same license my photo was released under.
Did this person provide attribution when using my photo? Not that I could find. Is the photo being used for commercial purposes? Determining Noncommercial use is the most frustrating part of Creative Commons licensing. The presentation the photo is used in is not being sold, and is freely available (under the same license, even!) but does this presentation highlight the presenter as an “expert” in their field (even though it claims not to) which in turn may result in the furthering of this person’s career? Is that “commercial” use in any way? Probably not, but without a lawyer, I’m never quite sure about this… Sadly, it’s probably something only the courts could decide. (At least the Share Alike requirement was met.)
So now the question is… What do I do?