6 ms·

> hunting for sites using photos without or with not 100% correct attribution I do not see what is wrong about this part (other than the illegal(?) nexus with

> hunting for sites using photos without or with not 100% correct attribution I do not see what is wrong about this part (other than the illegal(?) nexus with lawyers). CC licences still have to be complied with (or the user can contact the copyright holder for an alternative licence). GPL infringers have been taken to court as well, and a legal, for-profit litigation initiative might be a good incentive that encourages compliance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation

onli 6y ago
There are many ways to go about this. Using the one that causes monetary harm and disincentives everyone to even consider hosting a site is not the ethical option to pick, but it's the one that is profitable in the short term. It's not like they couldn't just ask first to respect the license, but this isn't about respecting the license, it's about generating an income.
dna_polymerase 6y ago
Since I've been victim of this practice, let me elaborate: There are individuals in Germany (two photographers IIRC) who upload photos to the Wikipedia. The licence is always CC with attribution, but that part is badly presented on Wiki (or was). Next thing, they wait for people to use their images and go around to sue everyone who doesn't display the attribution string alongside the image. It is just predatory behavior. They guy sent me an E-Mail with an pay early option. Their claims are also this weak, that the guy trying to pull this off with me was instantly silenced after our lawyer sent him a single letter.
- zucker42 6y ago
  Hmm, the text of the Creative Commons license is such that I would think such suits would be unsuccessful in court. Specifically, it has a section about reinstating your rights if you fix a violation of the license after you are notified. Has this ever been litigated? Of course receiving a demand letter is still a nuisance. If this is a problem that you have knowledge about, have you ever considered contacting Creative Commons about this? They could perhaps provide legal guidance or even modify the next version of the license (if there is a next version).
  - growt 6y ago
    I actually was sued over this exact thing and lost (and paid quite a bit of money). All for a little UI experiment that nobody saw but me, google and (via google image search) these vultures.
    - zucker42 6y ago
      Wow really, that's a pretty big problem. Which country?
      - growt 6y ago
        Germany
    - draugadrotten 6y ago
      So you were copying somebody else's work for free, without even giving them the attribution they ask for as- and THEY are the vultures?
      - growt 6y ago
        Read the grand parent comment for the practice I was referring to. Or are you just trolling?
        dang 6y ago
        Please do not break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of how bad another comment was. It only makes things even worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        growt 6y ago
        Sorry for breaking the snarky-rule. I guess I'm still too touchy about that issue. Also: Big thank you to you and the other mods for keeping this place civil!
- growt 6y ago
  And Wikipedia doesn't want to change the missing attribution and "hidden" license for their images. I guess some of those participating in that scheme are active wikipedians and lobbying to keep things as they are.
- Igelau 6y ago
  > The licence ... is badly presented on Wiki Maybe don't pull images from Wikipedia for exactly this reason?
  - dna_polymerase 6y ago
    I'm all for attribution in this case it was basically user generated content. We deployed measures to avoid this in the future afterwards, nonetheless I still think the practice is predatory. If I had ripped some artist off his hard work, sure. But not naming the photographer of an half-assed picture submitted to an article with close to zero traffic, in order to lure some people into copying the picture for your own profit is just shady.
growt 6y ago
Those guys were only publishing under the CC license to make a profit (by lawyer/court). I think thats wrong to abuse the CC license for profit this way. Another detail of that scheme: Wikipedia actually does not do (correct) attribution on their site (no attribution next to the images. So if you mirror/copy Wikipedia content, in germany you will be sued by "photographers" who won't enforce their attribution on wikipedia but will on your site (to make a profit, see above).
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  > Wikipedia actually does not do (correct) attribution on their site (no attribution next to the images. More recent versions like CC-BY-SA 4.0[1] explicitly say that it may be reasonable to attribute via a hyperlink. Older licence versions do not have this line, but even then, it could be argued that Wikipedia itself is not infringing because attribution is still provided as part of the same work (considering the whole of the German Wikipedia as the work), rather than on an external site. Unless German courts have already ruled that attribution has to be next to the image? 1. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s3a2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s3a...
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  If you have JavaScript enabled, attribution is displayed when you view the full-size image. If you don't have JavaScript enabled, it's still displayed when you view the full-size image, but it loads a different page to do so.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    Is it technically legal to show thumbnails without attribution?
- kayxspre 6y ago
  There's a few times I see the attribution next to the image itself (excluding the featured image, where there's plenty of spaces to do proper attribution). "Order of Parental Glory" [1] is one of the examples. Strangely enough, many of the examples of inline attribution is for images from kremlin.ru, meaning there's probably some kind of agreement that mandates inline credits back in the days, but no longer anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Parental_Glory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Parental_Glory

onli 6y ago

There are many ways to go about this. Using the one that causes monetary harm and disincentives everyone to even consider hosting a site is not the ethical option to pick, but it's the one that is profitable in the short term. It's not like they couldn't just ask first to respect the license, but this isn't about respecting the license, it's about generating an income.

dna_polymerase 6y ago

Since I've been victim of this practice, let me elaborate: There are individuals in Germany (two photographers IIRC) who upload photos to the Wikipedia. The licence is always CC with attribution, but that part is badly presented on Wiki (or was). Next thing, they wait for people to use their images and go around to sue everyone who doesn't display the attribution string alongside the image. It is just predatory behavior. They guy sent me an E-Mail with an pay early option. Their claims are also this weak, that the guy trying to pull this off with me was instantly silenced after our lawyer sent him a single letter.

zucker42 6y ago
Hmm, the text of the Creative Commons license is such that I would think such suits would be unsuccessful in court. Specifically, it has a section about reinstating your rights if you fix a violation of the license after you are notified. Has this ever been litigated? Of course receiving a demand letter is still a nuisance. If this is a problem that you have knowledge about, have you ever considered contacting Creative Commons about this? They could perhaps provide legal guidance or even modify the next version of the license (if there is a next version).
- growt 6y ago
  I actually was sued over this exact thing and lost (and paid quite a bit of money). All for a little UI experiment that nobody saw but me, google and (via google image search) these vultures.
  - zucker42 6y ago
    Wow really, that's a pretty big problem. Which country?
    - growt 6y ago
      Germany
  - draugadrotten 6y ago
    So you were copying somebody else's work for free, without even giving them the attribution they ask for as- and THEY are the vultures?
    - growt 6y ago
      Read the grand parent comment for the practice I was referring to. Or are you just trolling?
      - dang 6y ago
        Please do not break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of how bad another comment was. It only makes things even worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        growt 6y ago
        Sorry for breaking the snarky-rule. I guess I'm still too touchy about that issue. Also: Big thank you to you and the other mods for keeping this place civil!
growt 6y ago
And Wikipedia doesn't want to change the missing attribution and "hidden" license for their images. I guess some of those participating in that scheme are active wikipedians and lobbying to keep things as they are.
Igelau 6y ago
> The licence ... is badly presented on Wiki Maybe don't pull images from Wikipedia for exactly this reason?
- dna_polymerase 6y ago
  I'm all for attribution in this case it was basically user generated content. We deployed measures to avoid this in the future afterwards, nonetheless I still think the practice is predatory. If I had ripped some artist off his hard work, sure. But not naming the photographer of an half-assed picture submitted to an article with close to zero traffic, in order to lure some people into copying the picture for your own profit is just shady.

growt 6y ago

Those guys were only publishing under the CC license to make a profit (by lawyer/court). I think thats wrong to abuse the CC license for profit this way. Another detail of that scheme: Wikipedia actually does not do (correct) attribution on their site (no attribution next to the images. So if you mirror/copy Wikipedia content, in germany you will be sued by "photographers" who won't enforce their attribution on wikipedia but will on your site (to make a profit, see above).

joshuaissac 6y ago
> Wikipedia actually does not do (correct) attribution on their site (no attribution next to the images. More recent versions like CC-BY-SA 4.0[1] explicitly say that it may be reasonable to attribute via a hyperlink. Older licence versions do not have this line, but even then, it could be argued that Wikipedia itself is not infringing because attribution is still provided as part of the same work (considering the whole of the German Wikipedia as the work), rather than on an external site. Unless German courts have already ruled that attribution has to be next to the image? 1. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s3a2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s3a...
wizzwizz4 6y ago
If you have JavaScript enabled, attribution is displayed when you view the full-size image. If you don't have JavaScript enabled, it's still displayed when you view the full-size image, but it loads a different page to do so.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  Is it technically legal to show thumbnails without attribution?
kayxspre 6y ago
There's a few times I see the attribution next to the image itself (excluding the featured image, where there's plenty of spaces to do proper attribution). "Order of Parental Glory" [1] is one of the examples. Strangely enough, many of the examples of inline attribution is for images from kremlin.ru, meaning there's probably some kind of agreement that mandates inline credits back in the days, but no longer anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Parental_Glory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Parental_Glory