Giving Attribution for Images: Some History and a How-To

I want to show my students how to find, use, and give due credit for images in their blog posts. And I also want to tie this into the history they are learning.

Giving Attribution in History

We can see the origins of giving credit for creative work within the European Renaissance. Of course, authors and creators were given attribution for their work prior to this time, but some things happened that changed the culture of attribution starting from about the 15th century.

Preliminary drawing of Michelangelo's "Libyan" 

For one thing, the secular shift that began at this time put focus increasingly on human ability and accomplishments, not just on divine activity or the work of great people of the distant past. The flurry of creative work in the Renaissance (painting, architecture, poetry, philosophy, etc.) was also accompanied by a medium that made it more possible (and desirable) to give or receive credit for one's accomplishments--the printing press. Individual achievement could be accompanied by individual fame. And so we began to have a Brunelleschi, a Michelangelo, a Petrarch, a Shakespeare. In a period when self-fashioning was in fashion, it became fashionable to achieve notoriety as an individual artist, author, or creator.

This focus on the identity and increasingly, the originality of the individual creator would be amplified in future centuries, especially in the 18th century (where regular, inexpensive newspapers created a market for celebrity), and in the 19th century (when Romanticism idealized creators and creative genius). 

Recognizing the achievements of individuals was not a feature of medieval society, by and large, but over the last few centuries this has become enshrined in western culture (less so in the East), and has been codified in law by way of intellectual property concepts and regulation.

This means we must respect and attend to intellectual property, especially in this, our digital day. How do we do so?

Attribution in the Digital Age

Today, as we come to terms with a new, very fluid medium, we find that it is easy and desirable to create, adapt, and share images and other media. For example, the image at the top of this post is actually a remix of two Michelangelo images: a photo of one of his sketches, and a reproduction of his signature. I stitched them together in a flash in my "Skitch" program:

That sort of thing is a lot of fun to do in today's "remix culture," but it raises serious issues because intellectual property is harder to protect across the digital commons. These two images, by the way, are public domain images, as I indicate at the bottom of this post. But so much of what we see or may want to use is not in the public domain, is protected by copyright, and must be respected as such.

Happily, some farsighted and fair-minded individuals (like Larry Lessig) have pioneered a new way of accommodating both the need for easily finding and using media, and the need to give appropriate credit (or gain appropriate permission) for the use of original work. 

That way is the "Creative Commons," which is essentially a set of licenses (set up via the Creative Commons organization) that intellectual property owners can use to make it easier for their work to be appropriately used and credited. Essentially, the creative commons licenses get past the pesky problem with copyright, which is the difficulty of finding copyright holders, contacting them, and making the arrangements for using their material. (This is not impossible, by the way, but presents some friction we don't always like in the flow of online media creation and consumption.) 

A useful three-minute video introduces the philosophical concept of the Creative Commons as we understand the "shared culture" we now experience online. It's worth watching:

An intro to creative commons in 3 minutes

While not replacing copyright, a Creative Commons license enables a creator to give permission beforehand for certain kinds of uses of their material. All of these licenses (they are kept purposefully very simple) are described at CreativeCommons.org. 

Many platforms for creative content (such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and flickr) all have integrated choosing a creative commons license into their creative workflow. I have made it a habit to make my noncommercial media (which is 99% of what I put online) available for others to use via Creative Commons (see my Open Source Sonnets, devoted to the idea).

Finding Creative Commons-Licensed Media

1. Search from search.creativecommons.org (or their new search engine in beta, here
2. Search within Google, but once you have your results, choose the Tools menu / Usage rights to filter your results just to content that is "labeled for reuse" (has a Creative Commons license)

Of course, one may use more than just creative commons-licensed media in one's blog posts or personal publishing online. One can still obtain permission from a copyright holder, or create and use one's own media rather than using that of others. It is also possible to find public domain media on platforms such as Pexels that does not require attribution. But it is a good practice to give attribution, if for no other reason, to assure your readers that you have come by your content in the best way.  Creative Commons is a great way to go.  

Giving Attribution for CC-licensed Content

Once you have found some media with a CC license, how does one give attribution? The Creative Commons site has a one-page simple set of directions and examples for how to give attribution for CC-licensed content (and another, longer page with more details on best practices for attribution). They also recommend an easy-to-understand infographic about using creative commons photos that gives similar information.

I'll use my own recent blog post as an example (see following image). At the top of this post can be seen an image that illustrates my topic. I found this image via search.creativecommons.org, selecting the option for flickr, a photo site with a lot of CC-licensed content to draw upon:

At the bottom of my post can be seen, in a smaller font, the attribution that I gave for the image:

As is shown, I followed the Creative Commons site's attribution instructions, including

1. Name of the licensed content, 
2. Source (the name is linked to the page where I found it)
3. Author (with his name linked to his profile page on flickr. Such a link is not strictly necessary but it is a courtesy); and
4. License (whatever CC license that the media creator has put up with his/her content. This is also linked to the description of that license on the Creative Commons website -- another courtesy, though the link isn't strictly necessary, just indicating the type of license. License types and their short form meanings are explained here).

I want my students to use best practices for finding, using, and giving attribution for appropriately sourced media. It takes just a little effort to figure out how to do the right kind of searching, and how to give the right attribution -- but it is the right thing to do, and we should get in the habit as we compose blog posts for the public.

P.S. On using public domain images -- It is still a good practice to let people know where you found such open content. Note the attribution that I give here for the image at the top of this post.

Image credits: "Michelangelo Signature" and "Michelangelo libyan" (public domain images via Wikimedia Commons).