i saw an ask on my dash about reposting pics from flickr, and instead of hijacking that post, i figured i’d make my own. that bein said…
a quick rundown to sharing pics from Flickr.com
the thing with flickr is that there’s a certain way of doing things, and while it’s hard and convoluted and almost no one on tumblr cares, it’s still nice to acknowledge the creator when sharing their content. sure, by linking the photographer’s site underneath the pic you’re already doing more than 90% of the other’s, but… ya know. things aren’t always as simple as that.
to start this off, i’ll need to point you to Creative Commons. don’t need to go through their website if ya just want a quick rundown of how things work around here, i’m about to handle that right here.
creative commons are a thing invented for creators to safely share their work and determine how they want others to treat their work. you ever seen an “all rights reserved!” mention beneath someone’s work? that’s basically what i’m talking about. they’re neat and easy to get a hang of, and other websites use them as well (wikipedia, for example), so it’ll come in handy in the future for you.
there’s a few examples of how they might look; (on flickr they’re situated beneath the picture, on right from the author’s profile and the name of the work)
by clicking the blue text, you’ll be redirected to creative commons’ website of the said license, on which you can read your rights. it’s usually legal crap, but depending on what reads on that site you know if it’s alright to a) repost the image, b) edit it, c) share it at all. a rundown of the icons can be found underneath “the licenses” part of this site.
these icons determine how the situation will be handled. if “all the rights are reserved”, you don’t touch the picture. if “some rights are reserved”, you go and check which rights you still have and then go forth with your plans. if there’re “no known copyright restrictions”, you’re looking at public domain property, and i can assure you that none of the band pics on flickr belong to that; those are usually historical pictures or belong to anon-profit organization. there are also works that are “the us government work”, but again, don’t concern yourself with those pics.
how can i find pics that can be legally shared ?
for an easy way out, you can use this part of the cc website to find pictures. just tick whatever search options you need and press enter, and you’re good to go. it’ll redirect you straight to flickr with the advanced search options already figured out for you.
if you want to do it the oldschool way, you can go to flickr, use your search words, and then locate this on the site:
and then click whichever option you need to !
if you’re about to edit a pic, click “modifications allowed”, if only sharing something, go with “all creative commons”. from there, find a pic you like, decipher the license (aka the icons and your rights to the pic), and go nuts!
T H I N G S T O R E M E M B E R …
– always credit when sharing something! link the original artist, or better yet, the original picture upon posting it to tumblr. please. im begging you. always credit.
– post the license when sharing the pic, too. i mean the “CC BY-NC-SA 2.0″ or the “CC BY-NC-ND 2.0″ looking weird stuff when clicking the blue link next to the symbols. by sharing the license with the link and the photographer’s name you show others you’ve acknowledged your rights to the picture and show other people their rights straight away. + sometimes the author wants you to mention if you’re sharing an edited pic, in which case it’ll read on the license site and you need to point it out; “edit of “this pic” by this author (cc whatever letters)” covers it alright.
– never, ever share something that has an “all rights reserved” beneath it. it’s there for show, not yours to share or edit.
– before anything else, check that the work you’re about to share isn’t already reposted. that’s why only some pics taken from tumblr or blogspot or livejournal are shareable.
– if you mess up, it’s okay ! these things are hard and, as i said in the beginning, convoluted, so don’t stress too much. ask help if you need to, or just sit back and only reblog pics. here’s a neat post about finding correctly credited posts on tumblr.
this got really rant-y really quick, so sorry about that. feel free to ask questions, point out inaccuracies and, best of all, share legally sound pictures.
fabfrnkie 