On Monday, 8 April 2013 Lee Hellen emailed me to ask about the
obligations of a licensee in using images obtained from Brisbane
City Council's Virtual Brisbane series on its Flickr account given the CC-BY 2.0 Generic licence.
Lee – in a collaborative effort with other people - wished to use the images in
a document about 3dQld pointing out opportunities available through new surveying
and information technologies. Incidentally, I had just downloaded and installed
SketchUp – 3D for everyone programme – free
software emanating from a joint venture between Google™ and Trimble™. I
recognised the influence of Sketchup in one of the Virtual Brisbane series.
As a further
coincidence, on 5 April DRNM updated its information on Queensland Globe about
release of a Google
Earth App to layer Queensland Government datasets as announced by Premier Newman. However, the actual ability to improve these
services will depend on more co-ordinated efforts by industry on Improving
positional accuracy of the DCDB as envisaged in 3dQld venture. All these
things are testimony to the power in networks of people and organisations in
innovative processes. Innovation is about trying things that have elements of
newness and unpredictability. The opportunities cannot be separated from elements
of new risk-taking.
The CC
system of copyright licensing began in 2002 with the introduction of the CC-BY 2.0 Generic licence.
This licence was soon able to gain some acceptance internationally and the Creative
Commons website provides a summary
overview of its subsequent development in Australia. The system was born in
a digital age where it was increasingly possible for digital technology
enthusiasts to create mix, merge and mash up a variety of information from
various sources – with audio and visual clips from photography, cinematography,
music and various recorded performances.
One of the risks in merging information resulting from a variety of professional
and amateur publishing sources is the risk of copyright offence infringement.
The risk extends across national borders and the ability to appropriate the
results of other people’s work without acknowledgement or the offer of payment
soon became of more profound significance in arrangements for free trade.
Commercial publishers usually go to some lengths to let people know of
their claims to copyright and their acknowledgement of the work of other
persons. Australian copyright law acknowledges the creative work expressed as
writing and provides a separate treatment for creative elements in theatrical
performances, radio and TV broadcasts, photography, cinematography, drawings,
logos, and various icons. In addition, the Copyright Act makes a further
distinction between legal and moral rights. Commercial publishers usually
indicate the extent of their research in the front matter of their publications
or in the rolling of credits.
Returning
now to Lee’s query, the short answer is that a licensee is free to use the
information subject to giving attribution to whoever is entitled to receive it.
However, this leads in turn to the following questions that follow as matters
of logical analysis to inform a matter of practice:
1. Who
is entitled to receive attribution; and
2. What
should be said by way of attribution?
In downloading and incorporating works from the Flickr website under a
CC-BY licence , the guiding principles should be to give due respect to the creative
work done by other people; and to provide sufficient information by way of
attribution to identify persons and trace the provenance of the information back
to the source. Generally, the more professional publications and style guides
provide examples of how this can be done.