Appropriation — Attribution

Over the last twenty years I’ve posted numerous images on the internet. Mostly here on FITK, but many were on various forums and even some in Wikipedia. In the early days of the internet  people were generally conscientious about asking for permission and would dutifully give credit where credit is due.

That was then, this is now.

When the internet’s leading guru/pundit blatantly steals a copyrighted image and defaces it, he is lauded for his efforts: the image goes viral and even earns him a book deal. I’m not too concerned about my images however, my only hope is that others are glad to see them and that their lives have been enriched by the experience. My Wikipedia images, however, come with a caveat (my emphasis in bold) :

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:

w:en:Creative Commons: attribution share alike

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

You are free:

to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

Recently Neal Bond, a Facebook group host, used a couple of my images in an AI-generated video about Koerner, Ray, and Glover, a seminal folk-blues trio from Minnesota. The original black and white images (bottom) were transformed into impasto-style paintings and impressively so, I must admit. But there was no attribution and he claimed a copyright. The video (and the AI song on the soundtrack) isn’t exactly AI slop—it’s more like AI treacle. Neal’s heart is in the right place, he’s made dozens of these ‘tributes’ but they would be classier with some attributions, even a split-second mention in an end title would suffice.

Here is Neal’s AI rendering of my photo of Dave Ray (his AI rendering of Tony is above):

And here are my originals:

Perhaps I protest too much. But if my work had been represented by Getty Images, I just might have a case.