Chris, your strategy of always using a dl-ed copy makes most sense for preservation of your content. I do that for my work sites, but get kind of lazy with the blog cause my copy and paste method is fast.

Of course no one reads blogs, especially old ones, so I’m not worried.

Downloading or not is a red herring in that respect.

As I understand it, that’s completely backward. CC licenses can’t be revoked or changed in a way that equals that license being revoked. Which is what Alan quotes above and is a very important part of what makes the CC license work for more than just the short term– if it weren’t in line with CC to use an image that was usable at the time of use subject to later changes we’d be right back in essentially the same boat we are with screwed up “normal” copyright provisos. The nature of the CC license provides that stability necessary for re-use!

I’ve had a few instances where owners have removed images and I end up with a black gap that cannot be replaced without redoing the whole mosaic.

While this is frustrating, in the spirit of ‘share alike’ I respect their decision. If they have decided they no longer want to share that image (perhaps for significant personal reasons) then we must accept it. Continuing to use the image by downloading it first doesn’t align to CC in my mind.

BTW – your script is fab- have finally installed it. I use FlickR pics all the time in blog posts and am very particular about attribution. But its time consuming.

Don’s comment and mine crossed in the ether so I’m off to check out that tool. Cool!

That image stamper link Don posted might be the record keeping you seek?

These are the questions that keep me up late at night! Well, not really. But its kind of an interesting thought exercise. :-)