* Repeating licensing info for media in reports

[AdrianBruce]

I've just copied an image of a church from Wikimedia into my FH data. It's released under "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license" so I've faithfully copied that into the picture note for the media item.

Now, what I want is for this to appear every time I use the image (usually against a person's fact) in a report - bearing in mind that the image may appear several times in any one report. The (default) caption in a report, however, doesn't seem to use the picture note.

I can stick the CC Attribution note into the title for the media but that seriously makes the media record titles look ridiculous. Furthermore, as soon as I use an event-specific caption and set the "Use Note as Caption" check box, it's all lost and I have to repaste the attribution into the event-specific caption.

Right now, the least worst option seems to me to be that, whenever I use the image against a fact / whatever, then I use an event specific caption with a copy of the CC Attribution text along with the title and whatever event specific note I need. Such as:

St George's Church, Hulme, Manchester (this is from the media record title)
- Sarah's burial place. (this is unique to this event)
(By Wikimedia user Benkid77. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.) (this is from the picture note for the media item)

Am I missing anything to make this easier and reduce the repetition?

[jimlad68]

add the info to the picture. various methods, Photoshop, gimp, add text or join 2 images etc. keep lossless format in case you need to amend again, But, keep your original as a master..

[AdrianBruce]

Mmm - one good way of doing it. Mind you, choosing a legible size of text might be a challenge, given I couldn't swear what size the image would get used at.

[jimlad68]

OK, other option is to add it to your title, file name or whatever that always gets printed or follows the image around.

[LornaCraig]

But Adrian's point is "that seriously makes the media record titles look ridiculous" and anyway the title does not always get printed because he often uses event-specific captions by ticking "Use Note as Caption".

Sorry Adrian, your "least worst option" is the only option I can think of.

[NickiP]

How about creating a Source Record with an appropriate title relating to the specific image and link the Source to the Fact, so that it would appear in the list of Sources and numbered against the Fact? Depending on where you are showing the images in the Report, at least it would be correctly sourced in relation to where it was used.

[AdrianBruce]

Well, it would certainly be there using that method but probably not very obvious since it would be linked, as you say to the text of the fact, rather than the image. And I'm not sure whether that really honours the licencing requirement because of that. But thanks for the thought.

[tatewise]

Adrian, if I understand the terms correctly then you must include much more than just stating "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License".

The web page Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported says the Attribution must give appropriate credit, which is defined as:

If supplied, you must provide the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material. CC licenses prior to Version 4.0 also require you to provide the title of the material if supplied, and may have other slight differences.

So the Source record approach may be the best solution. That record should include all the necessary Attribution appropriate credit details, creator, copyright, licence, disclaimer, etc, and the picture itself. You just have to remember to cite that Source everywhere you link the picture to a Fact, etc.

[AdrianBruce]

You're probably right Mike - I just wish they'd make it a bit more obvious what each of those terms is.

I make it about 7 items that you list there - the Wikimedia item concerned is on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 250709.JPG and there's only 4 items in the table there plus the boiler plate licence text (?). I'm presuming some of that will be copyright related, some will be Wikimedia change control, some will be instructions to the reader - and it's not obvious to me which is which. Are the phrases, "You are free...", e.g., instructions or part of the license that must be reproduced or both? (All comments gratefully rec'd).

It says that I must "must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor". Fine - I'm left guessing whether the manner specified is in the summary or what. Though interestingly, when I click on Rept0n1x I get to another page with some instructions. And clicking on Benkid77 tells me that Benkid77 is now Rept0n1x. Not at all obvious at first glance.

Gosh this is complex at first sight.

And of course, if you look at the original article in Wikipedia on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of ... oad,_Hulme, there isn't anything that I'd recognise as a copyright notice there - just a note that "Wikimedia Commons has media related to Church of St George, Chester Road, Hulme." I don't call that a copyright notice. (If I understand it, you don't need one but if you're going to have specifics, it would be nice to get a hint where to go.) And while I'm in "frustrated of FHUG" mood - I really wonder if anonymous creator names are legal?

Trying to be positive about this... Can anyone suggest for this item, what I should include in a report or on a web-site? If I were to put it on a personal web-site, I'm tempted to be like Wikipedia and just have a link to that Wikimedia page and blow the rest.... Not sure about a report - I'm not printing all that text for every such image. Wonder if using "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported" as a source or repository (with some text) would help? I guess in there I'd need URLs, rather than just text, which I think is a mistake I've been making up to now.

Yes, I think Mike, you're right about having to use proper sources, though the potential for missing a use is worrying.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Adrian,

I'm doing stuff like this on my website.

http://www.colevalleygirl.co.uk/acknowledgements
http://www.colevalleygirl.co.uk/snapsho ... valleygirl
http://www.colevalleygirl.co.uk/privacy

Plus I've made a conscious decision not to include images of sources when I publish my research; images of people and places will face the challenges you've encountered and I don't have a good solution.

Helen

[tatewise]

I am not an expert on this topic, and was just making observations derived from the web page advice.

Regarding the Attribution credits, it says: "You may do so in any reasonable manner," so URL links to the originals will probably suffice.

[AdrianBruce]

Thanks Helen - the manner that you have employed, is simple, clear and what I think I was expecting to do to start with - the crucial bit is probably to use URLs to link to all the stuff and not re-write it.

I appreciate the comments Mike - it's just that what started out a simple desire to give credit, suddenly ballooned if I were supposed to include all the text mentioned rather than link to it. But I think you're right - URLs. After all, if Wikipedia does it....

[NickiP]

Just a thought, if the Narrative Reports are to be distributed as PDFs with clickable links to URLs then I agree that it should suffice. I just wonder if the reports are to be printed, whether that would really suffice because while the details are there, few people would probably type a full URL manually into a web browser to see the details. Yes in theory there is little difference, but without the clickability of a URL, it may perhaps not really serve the required purpose. A little pedantic yes, but perhaps worth considering depending on how you are distributing them.

[AdrianBruce]

Nicki - I would agree with your concerns - no real idea how I might distribute stuff though I'm unlikely to print any hard copy except for my own use.

[AnneEast]

I know this does not constitute a proper legal answer but ......
Speaking as someone who has spent many happy hours taking photos of churches and gravestones and then uploaded them like this, intending that everyone who wants to use them can do so. I am horrified that it might cause such angst!! I uploaded my photos so they were FREE to use. Nuff said.
Anne

[AdrianBruce]

Anne - you're very public spirited. But you do deserve to be credited. And the topic of just where their shots can be used may be an issue for some - there are those who get annoyed at seeing their FindAGrave shot in Ancestry. Either they object to being uncredited (rightly so) or they just object to Ancestry.

At the end of the proverbial day, I just want a simple means of crediting people properly - part of my frustration earlier in this thread came from a similar attitude to yours, "So complex? You cannot be serious!" I think Helen's ideas get me back to simplicity.

[Peter Collier]

Adrian,

Rather than put a full credit on the image file which, as you say, doesn't look great and may not scale well, could you not instead just embed some sort of short reference number/code in the image and have a single, full reference as a note somewhere else in your document?

If the number/code needs to be large enough to read at smaller scales but it detracts too much from the image, make it semi-opaque ("watermark").

[AdrianBruce]

Worth a try, I think.