Mediabistro house ad using my Metro 2030 map.

Last week, alert reader c5karl noticed that MediaBistro had created house ads using my WMATA 2030 map. That map, like everything else on this site, is under a Creative Commons license. A CC license lets me allow people to use my content in certain cases but still withhold permission in other cases. The license I’m using allows reusing my content and images as long as people give me credit, and only noncommercially. Of course, I’m also always free to give individual permission to use content outside of those parameters; I’m not sure if WMATA is “commercial” or not, but I gave them explicit permission, so it doesn’t matter.

Most of the photos I use on blog posts come from Creative Commons licensed content on Flickr. I always link back to the original Flickr page and put the name of the photographer in the caption. Having CC is great: I can simply search for images to use, then use them. It’d be impractical to email the photographer each time and wait for permission, but illegal to use one without permission. Creative Commons solves this problem.

Creative Commons is particularly important because Congress has made the penalties for copyright infringement so draconian. Prodded by music companies worried about unauthorized file sharing, they’ve raised the penalties to ridiculous heights. For a single willful infringement of just one image, the law allows plaintiffs to sue for $150,000. MediaBistro’s infringement probably wasn’t willful, but we don’t know for sure. If it wasn’t willful, I could still be entitled to $750 to $30,000. I’m not going to sue MediaBistro, but some photographers have even suggested making a business out of suing people who use their images online. The excellent blog The Consumerist got in trouble for using images without permission or attribution.

This is probably fair use. Via Salon.

To my fellow bloggers: please be careful when reusing entire images. I’ve seen blogs take a photograph off a news story and use it as the picture for their post, or repost an entire funny cartoon. That’s not legal (and it’s not right, either). Deciding what’s right or wrong in this area comes down to “fair use”, a much-used but little-understood doctrine that relies on several factors. For example, I recently saw a hilarious Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon about Chrysler and high gas prices, and wanted to post about it. I could just have said, “check out that hilarious cartoon,” but a picture would drive the punch home. At the same time, if I posted the entire image, Ruben Bolling would lose out on the chance to earn money from ads alongside his cartoon.

I decided to post a fragment (right), that reveals some of the joke but not all, designed to entice readers to click through to the actual cartoon. In fact, by doing this, I probably generated more clicks to the cartoon than if I’d just linked to it in text. One of the criteria for fair use is my effect on the market for the work; by posting the whole thing, I’d be reducing its value, but by using a small portion, I’m increasing it. (Whether I use all or part is also itself one of the criteria).

Bloggers, please check the licenses for images you use, and if you must use a copyrighted image, think carefully about how to do it fairly. Photographers, I strongly urge you to use Creative Commons on your Flickr images, so that bloggers can legally use them in ways you permit while giving you credit.

On a related note, if a blogger finds out about an interesting news story on someone else’s blog, should they link to that blog as well as the news story? This isn’t a legal issue, but I do that out of courtesy because tipping me off to the subject is a valuable service. WashCycle recently wondered whether another blogger found out about MyBikeLane from WashCycle. Maybe so, maybe not, but I’ve observed a variety of practices between blogs on this subject. Here’s how I do it.

This has been your public service announcement. Next, back to your regularly scheduled transportation and smart growth debates.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.