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Best Practices for Attribution

wiki.creativecommons.org

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Re: Best Practices for Attribution

#11

Post by taink »

zaep wrote: post #6

> One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. There's probably a distinction that I'm not aware of but this is not true for CC0 (as stated also in the FAQ for CC0 on this same website).

They seem to draw a line between their licenses and CC0, which they regard more as a "public domain dedication tool". Truth is, you usually can't really throw something in the public domain even if you want to : CC0 is supposed to be a way to get as close as possible. Being in the public domain means your work doesn't need a license, because there is no right to license. They seem to get rid of that word for that reason (it's still a license though obviously).

Re: Best Practices for Attribution

#12

Post by deadbunny »

grumbel wrote: post #8

Not terribly helpful. The issue I run into constantly with attribution is that the place I want to use a work does not have room for attribution. If you use a texture in a game for example, you can't just slap the authors name on it. If you put in the credits, nobody knows what texture it's referring too. If you make a list of filenames that links them to the author, it can get easily lost whenever somebody renames a…

Do you need to state where it was used or just that you used it?

> You may satisfy the conditions in (1) and (2) above in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means and context in which the Licensed Material is used. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy some or all of the conditions by retaining a copyright notice, or by providing a URI or hyperlink associated with the Licensed Material, if the copyright notice or webpage includes some or all of the required information.

> There is no one right way; just make sure your attribution is reasonable and suited to the medium you're working with. That being said, you still have to include attribution requirements somehow, even if it's just a link to an About page that has that info.

This suggests "[Texture Name](http://foobar.com/texture.png) by Foo Bar / CC0" in a CREDITS.md should be enough? Just make sure the CREDITS.md (or a rendered html version?) is in the install dir for the game

Re: Best Practices for Attribution

#13

Post by kayxspre »

kazinator wrote: post #7

The "ideal attribution" links to the author via some Flickr URL that will not work twenty years from now? Yagoddabekidding. How about, First name, initials, last name, city, country, year of birth.

Also in the case the license was changed to be more restrictive, which gives a headache on how to prove that the use before the license was changed is permitted if the license information was not captured (manually or by archive sites) at first use.

[1] gave a good discussion about whether it is possible to revoke CC license. It doesn't seem likely, but if it does, then it will lead to the license paradox for creators and users alike.

[1] https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/05/11/q-can-you-rev...

Re: Best Practices for Attribution

#15

Post by ghaff »

deadbunny wrote: post #12
grumbel wrote: post #8

Not terribly helpful. The issue I run into constantly with attribution is that the place I want to use a work does not have room for attribution. If you use a texture in a game for example, you can't just slap the authors name on it. If you put in the credits, nobody knows what texture it's referring too. If you make a list of filenames that links them to the author, it can get easily lost whenever somebody renames a…

Do you need to state where it was used or just that you used it? > You may satisfy the conditions in (1) and (2) above in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means and context in which the Licensed Material is used. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy some or all of the conditions by retaining a copyright notice, or by providing a URI or hyperlink associated with the Licensed Material, if the copyrigh…

While you could argue it's true with attributions in general (how many people make a note of the photo credit on a typical photograph), I think the point is that an attribution buried in an obscure credits file may satisfy the letter of the attribution requirement but is only actually meaningful in edge cases where someone really wants to track the creator down.

And to another point a couple of people have made, one of the big bugbears with crediting media generally is that the attributions are disconnected from the media in general (absent watermarks) so even if you're careful in your presentation, the person reusing some of your material may not be.

Re: Best Practices for Attribution

#16

Post by grumbel »

deadbunny wrote: post #12
grumbel wrote: post #8

Not terribly helpful. The issue I run into constantly with attribution is that the place I want to use a work does not have room for attribution. If you use a texture in a game for example, you can't just slap the authors name on it. If you put in the credits, nobody knows what texture it's referring too. If you make a list of filenames that links them to the author, it can get easily lost whenever somebody renames a…

Do you need to state where it was used or just that you used it? > You may satisfy the conditions in (1) and (2) above in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means and context in which the Licensed Material is used. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy some or all of the conditions by retaining a copyright notice, or by providing a URI or hyperlink associated with the Licensed Material, if the copyrigh…

> Do you need to state where it was used or just that you used it?

If I don't state where it is used, that might work for me, but not for the next guy that comes along and wants to reuse a texture from my game in their own.

This is not just a theoretical concern, some Linux distributions like Debian can be pretty picky when it comes to copyright, so having a clear record of the copyright of every single file would be really helpful. A plain text file is ok if it is properly maintained, but it's also easy to simply lose some files in the process, as it is all done manually. Tools to automate that process that can be integrated into the CI would be very welcome.

My dream would be that tools like Gimp and Krita would be able to automatically keep track of the copyright of the images you copy&paste into them, as that would not just track the copyright of the original images, but also all the remixes that you produce out of them.

Re: Best Practices for Attribution

#17

Post by CharlesW »

grumbel wrote: post #16
deadbunny wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need to state where it was used or just that you used it? > You may satisfy the conditions in (1) and (2) above in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means and context in which the Licensed Material is used. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy some or all of the conditions by retaining a copyright notice, or by providing a URI or hyperlink associated with the Licensed Material, if the copyrigh…

> Do you need to state where it was used or just that you used it? If I don't state where it is used, that might work for me, but not for the next guy that comes along and wants to reuse a texture from my game in their own. This is not just a theoretical concern, some Linux distributions like Debian can be pretty picky when it comes to copyright, so having a clear record of the copyright of every single file would be…

> If I don't state where it is used, that might work for me, but not for the next guy that comes along and wants to reuse a texture from my game in their own.

I think it's generous that you want to do this, and nothing prevents you from creating a document that breaks down where and how attributed resources are used, but attribution — per Wikipedia, "acknowledgment as credit to the copyright holder or author of a work" — doesn't require that.

Re: Best Practices for Attribution

#18

Post by CharlesW »

andrew-jack wrote: post #14

Quoted post unavailable.

> In addition, a searchable database of Creative Commons works would be a welcome addition to the Internet.

Openverse is a CC search engine with 600 million items: https://wordpress.org/openverse/

And of course, Google Images supports CC search for images.

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