Obviously if an image is CC-BY the creator would be happy to have it used. It wasn’t so much an assumption as a fear of that 1%.

The PhotoDropper Plugin looks great – I was wondering how the attributions captions got in there (worked it out from source though). Another reason to put in the work to host my own WP blog.

Don’t worry… plenty of village-sacking and booty-plundering will continue. :-)

They may kick up a fuss, but I think you are making way too many assumptions. I bet 99.9% of the people would die of joy that someone wants to use their image.

BTW I am liking lately compfight for finding pictures — and if you run your own WordPress, PhotoDropper Plugin rocks! It allows you to search on tags write in the WP interface, and it inserts the images right there with the attribution written for you (the 2 in this post were done this way)
http://www.photodropper.com/wordpress-plugin/

I am not in any suggesting you need to contact every person you may use a CC image from- I never do it for blog posts. But if I was doing a major special project, I likely would. It’s just a nice courtesy, and in a way, you are paying it forward, because I bet you will foster a new connection that you would have never had before.

But woah dude, if you are depending on me for a moral compass, you are doomed to be lost or to founder on the shores of depravity. Puhhlease…. Now go out and sack a village or plunder some booty.

On the rare occasions I post a blog it can take me anything up to an hour to find just the CC right image on flickr (I’m a perfectionist – one of the reasons blogging is such an effort for me). Every time I ask myself if I should let the creator know, and then I think: “Nah, what if they don’t like it? I might have to take it down after all that effort, and I’ll have to find another one.” But so what?

Today you’ve made me think what it would be like if someone used my stuff and didn’t let me know about it – you’ve put me into the shoes of the other – and now I realise I would prefer to be notified. Now I won’t be able to use someone else’s material again without letting them know. It’s the right thing to do.

Cogdog – “Moral compass of the blogging world.” :-)