CC, copyright and plagiarism

Welcome back for the SotD, the Share of the Day !

Today, I found an article (in french) worth sharing, about copyrights.

This story is about a (too) common non-respect of the attribution of the credits  when using or copying a work from an artist / photographer / illustrator.

the original image from Stephanie Walter (left) and its copy by Cera (agency, right)

 The image of Stephanie Walter (left) has a CC (creative commons) protection, which just asks for the users to put her name as copyright.

As too often, Cera decided to re-use her image (left one) without citing her name. Stephanie Walter tweeted them to correct this. What happened then surprised her a lot.

Instead of just correcting their mistake (as often happens, by users who don't know the rules or forgot in their website creation), they decided to replace her creation by a plagiarism: The new image was now on the website (right one), but without her name. Their justification was now 'we replaced the image, their is no need for a CC no more'.

This is tireing, but once again, here is the legal explanation:

- CC does need quoting the name of the creator.

- CC still means that there is some copyright

- the agency said afterwards that "ideas can't be protected by copyright", except that here, they copied a concrete materialisation of an idea, so it's just not an idea anymore.

- plagiarism can be legally suited as well as the non-respect of copyright.

In this case, the author didn't decide to suit the agency and just wanted her name to be associated with her work. Sadly, she didn't get respected, but that's not a reason for making commonplace of this story !!

Don't forget, 1 share or 1 like = 1 happier koala :)

T. 

My FB page is here !