Blog Series "Proper Picture Credits": Part 2 - Rules for online picture credits
The second part of our series on proper image credits focuses on the rules for proper online picture credits.
Part 1 - Picture rights management within your company
Part 2 - Rules for online picture credits
Part 3 - Maintain and manage picture credits in the CMS
Part 4 - Remove images completely from the CMS after a warning letter
Part 2: Rules for online image credits
Even if - as shown in the first part of the series - all image sources and licenses in the company have been documented in an exemplary manner, the next problems arise when the proofs are output in the company's content management system (CMS).
Legal requirements for correct image credits on a website
Unfortunately, the law only stipulates that the creator of an image has a right to name the authorship according to § 13 UrhG (German Copyright Act). How exactly this right is to be implemented on a website depends very much on the individual license conditions of the rights holders. Some court rulings, such as the Pixelio ruling by the Cologne Regional Court and its reversal by the Cologne Higher Regional Court, have caused more confusion than clarity.
Image credits in the image itself?
The original ruling required that each image from the stock photo provider Pixelio be provided with an image credit in the image itself, because an image can theoretically also be called up individually in the browser. After the ruling was overturned, naming the author in the image itself is no longer absolutely necessary.
One possible exception concerns the inclusion of social media images. An image can be invisibly incorporated into a page as an Open Graph image as a meta file. When the page is then shared with a service such as Facebook, the linked image appears as an image preview for the page. To avoid committing copyright infringement with the embedded share image (without image credit in the share message), it must be ensured that the purchased license is also valid for social media, or a separate social media license of the image must be purchased. Some providers, such as Fotolia (prior to its acquisition by Adobe Stock), required the proof to be attached to the image itself for this license. In this case, the licensor's request must then be followed.
The right place for the online image credit
Most licensors expect the image credit to be placed in close proximity to the location where an image is used. So the obvious place for the image credit is to use the image caption field in the content management system. Unfortunately, however, many licenses mandatorily require a link in the image credit. Some systems fail because of this. In the case of the image subtitle in the CMS TYPO3, for example, individual links in the image caption are not possible without further adjustments to the system.
Another possibility is to place all image credits of a page at the bottom of the page. This way, the legally required spatial proximity to the image is still present. An image reference at the foot of the page can be easily separated from the actual page content, so that the sometimes very detailed information does not interfere with the flow of reading in the article.
Ideally, a jump marker link is placed from the image credits to the original image, so that the credits can be clearly assigned to many images.
Some licensors (such as Fotolia in the past) also allow a collected output of all image credits on a special page, such as the imprint or a separate image credit page. However, this is only practical if a website contains very few pages and images. With several hundred images on a website, such a collective directory quickly becomes unmaintainable and credits can no longer be clearly assigned to an original image and all its places of use. We therefore generally advise against creating a dedicated page for image credits.
Designing online image credits: the devil is in the details
After we have clarified the possible placement of the image credits, we can turn to the concrete design of the individual image credits. There are - depending on the image license used - often surprisingly many possibilities to execute an image credit (despite good will) only incompletely.
Obligatory link to the original image or licensor
For example, a popular cause of warning is this license provision from the provider of Pixelio, the provider of free stock photos.
"When used on the internet or digital media, the reference to PIXELIO must also be made in the form of a link to www.pixelio.de."
This is a note that was often overlooked by website operators until the first waves of warning letters were issued. Legally, it has not yet been finally clarified whether a missing link (while otherwise complying with all desired license conditions) already constitutes a copyright infringement. But it certainly can't hurt to adhere to the conditions requested by the licensor, as long as they are known.
Surprising obligations in Creative Commons licenses
The popular Creative Commons license for images also holds some unexpected pitfalls. For starters, a company should only use images with CC licenses that do not fall under the "NC: Not Commercial" sublicense. Since the images are often post-processed by the content management system, all CC licenses with the addition of "ND: No Derivates" as the image source also fall out of the selection, because the image may no longer be edited. So only images under BY-SA license are eligible for use on the corporate website.
But these must also be correctly identified. For example, most CC licenses require a link to the original version of the image. In addition, an external link to the specific license version under which the image was released is usually required.
In some cases, it must be stated whether an image was subsequently edited (e.g. with cropping or color correction). It is also often overlooked that the original name of the image must be given, if it is known. All these requirements are unfortunately hidden in the online version of the licenses in the pop-up layer to "appropriate credit / appropriate copyright and rights information" and are therefore often overlooked.
Since many of the creators and image authors who have placed their images under Creative Commons licenses do not work for profit or do not come from German-speaking countries, the risk of a warning letter due to carelessness in the CC image credits is rather unlikely. But even here, you should try to provide the requested information - as far as possible - in full.
The next part in the series will describe how best to manage the image credits on the web server in the content management system.
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