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Une leçon de Creative Commons

The article from Le Republicain Lorraine

For many years, we had a beautiful Golden retriever named Buzz.  He was a really lovely dog. We got him through Golden Retriever Rescue NSW and he was pretty special to us. He eventually  became quite old and unwell, and we had to put him down last year just before Christmas.

I was a little surprised today when I saw an article on a French news site about a Golden Retriever. It was a fairly sad story of a Golden who went to the vet for an operation and was accidentally euthanised.

Whilst it was a sad story that brought back some painful memories of the night we lost our Golden boy, I was a little surprised that the photo being used was one of my own, taken of Buzz a few years ago. Because I believe in sharing as a default, I published the photo on Flickr under a Creative Commons BY SA licence, as nearly all of my photos are. So this French news site has every right to use my photo as long as they respect the CC guidelines under which I published it, namely the BY (Attribution) and the SA (Share Alike).

While I am very happy to share, and I enjoy seeing my photos being used by others, the CC licence (and general politeness!) requires that I receive attribution and acknowledgement for their use of my image. While they did indeed do this by mentioning my name, it is also usually expected that they would link to the source of the image, in this case the photo on Flickr. This did not happen even though this is the normal thing to do on the Internet when using someone else’s image.

But I was especially not impressed when I clicked the “Photo HD” button to find that they have placed intrusive watermarks all over my photo to prevent anyone else from using it, with a note above it saying “L’accès aux photos HD sans filigrane est réservé aux abonnés”, which translates as “Access to HD photos without watermark is reserved for subscribers”.

This kind of pisses me off, because they do NOT have the rights to restrict access to my image like this, especially when they make it a subscription access thing. Whilst I choose not to use the NC (Non Commercial) aspect of the Creative Commons licensing system – which mean that people can indeed make money from using my photos if they wish – the SA (Share Alike) component means that they must publish under the same licence as they got it. In practical terms, this does effectively mean that my photos cannot be used commercially, since anyone using them has to make them freely available in the same way that I did. But what they are definitely not allowed to do is to restrict others from using them in any way, including watermarks or paywalls.  I see this as a clear breach of the terms of my Creative Commons licence.

Anyway, here’s a copy of the email I wrote to them. Let’s see what happens…

Bonjour,

I noticed that you used one of my Flickr images on your story about Golden Retrievers.  (https://www.republicain-lorrain.fr/france-monde/2016/12/19/le-veterinaire-euthanasie-un-chien-par-erreur)
The photo is licensed on Flickr under a Creative Commons BY-SA licence, which means you are allowed to use it, but only under two conditions that must be met…

  1. ATTRIBUTION – You acknowledge the owner of the image.  While you have done this by mentioning my name, the more usual way to acknowledge this is to also provide a link to the source of the image.  

  2. SHARE ALIKE – You publish it under the same terms as you got it, and you do not prevent anyone else from using the image.  In the screenshot below, I notice that you have covered the HD version of image in watermarks, with a message saying “Access to HD photos without watermark is reserved for subscribers”. This effectively prevents anyone else from using the image without making a payment to you. Because this image is published under a Share Alike licence, you do NOT have the rights to restrict access to it by others, or to suggest that a payment is required.

These conditions are clearly marked on the Flickr page where you found the image.
Those of us who publish our content under a Creative Commons license do so in good faith that our copyright will be respected under the terms of the CC licence we choose to publish with. It is frustrating to find that mainstream media publishers such as yourself either do not understand the requirements of using a CC image, or choose to ignore them.
I am ok with you continuing to use the image, but please remove the watermarks and restrictions in your HD image preview, and provide a link back to the original work. If you cannot do this, then kindly cease using the image.

Please reply to let me know how you plan to deal with this.

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My GDPR Statement

Like you, I have also been inundated with updated privacy policy emails lately in the wake of the new GDPR rules (General Data Protection Regulation). Everyone wants to tell me what they are doing to protect my data. To be honest, it’s not something that’s been bothering me, but thanks for clogging my inbox anyway.

It gets silly… I’ve heard that some schools are using GDPR as an excuse to avoid having things online, such as refusing to post photos or student work, not allowing students to use online services, etc. I’ve even heard it suggested that you can’t read blogs anymore as it infringes on the GDPR rules! I am pretty sure that was not the purpose of GDPR (and we certainly should not allow some rule designed for the European Union to be affecting schools as far away as New Zealand!)

I also heard that some bloggers are adding GDPR compliance statements to their blogs for fear of breaking the rules. Which I think is ridiculous, but here goes…

This blog does not, has never, and will never, use your personal information in any way. I don’t collect it, and if I did I wouldn’t share it.  The only time you “give” me your data is if you leave a comment here, but that’s entirely up to you and you can be anonymous if you want.  The full privacy policy is here.

If you have privacy concerns raised by the GDPR about leaving comments on this (or any other) blog, then here’s my advice. Don’t leave comments.

In fact, if you have privacy concerns raised by the GDPR about simply reading blogs, then here’s my advice. Don’t read blogs.

Of course, if you don’t like paranoid Europeans telling you what to do, then do whatever you want.

 

Header image CC BY-SA: GDPR and ePrivacy on Flickr by Dennis van der Hiejden

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Choosing a Music Streaming Service

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that the music industry was still resisting any attempt at allowing consumers to access music in any way other that buying CDs. So many other industries have been disrupted by digital technology, and while a few notable ones stuck doggedly to their “principles” until they literally vanished (I’m looking at you Kodak and Blockbuster), most industries either embraced the disruption or eventually waved the white flag and gave in.

One of the industries that probably should have most logically embraced the opportunities of being digital was the music business. After all, with a product that is essentially just a collection of digital bits, the decision to move those bits directly to consumers via the Internet should have been a no brainer. Yet the record company cartels fought the inevitable digital transition for years.  Rarely have I seen such a group of people with so little vision for the future be so obstinate about protecting their incumbency.

Thanks in large part the disruption of Apple and the iTunes Store in popularising the idea of moving music off plastic disks and making it into downloadable files, the door was opened to companies like Spotify to avoid all that messy iTunes syncing nonsense and just let you listen to music directly on your device as a stream of bits.  And of course, without the pirate attitude of early filesharing services like Napster, it may have taken a lot longer to get to that point.

So here we are in 2018, and we are now almost spoilt for choice when it comes to streaming music services. Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music and Amazon Music seem to be the popular choices, but there are plenty of others to explore like Deezer, Pandora, IHeartRadio, and more.

I’ve been using Google Play Music for a while now, and I quite like it. While it was a bit rough when it started, it has definitely improved it’s recommendation algorithms over the past year or so (although sometime the stuff it serves up based on my apparent listening tastes still seem quite bizarre).  As a paid subscriber I also get access to YouTube Red, which apart from access to special YouTube Red limited content (which I don’t really watch anyway) it’s nice to not have ads appearing in YouTube.

My biggest gripe with Google Play Music is that it’s tied to a single Google account (my Gmail account), so it’s a nuisance when I’m logged in to another account, like my work account.  Yes I know can have multiple windows open, I understand that, but I think this idea that my content (files, music, photos, etc) is tied to an account and not an identity is ridiculous and a major problem with the way Google handles these things.  I am still me, and my content is still mine, regardless of which account I am logged into.

Like many people, I also have a free Spotify account.  Because it’s free I have to put up with ads, so I’ve tended not to use it as much as Play Music. But the predictions and recommendations of Spotify seemed to be quite good, and it’s a great way to discover new music or hear old favourites. However, what I really like with Spotify, is that I’m allowed to be just me. I can log into Spotify completely independently of any other accounts I may or may not be logged into. I like that a lot.

That independence carries across to devices as well, with Spotify also playing nicely with most major hardware platforms.  It plays nicely with Chromecast, which is important to me, but also with many other services and devices. And of course, because it’s so widely used by so many people, it’s pretty easy to share and access playlists with friends. I signed up for the three month trial and am digging it so far.

That said, it’s not perfect. For example, there is no option to upload your own music. I have a number of files that are simply not available online because they are not commercially available.  Old singles, obscure bands, recording of my kids when they were little, songs recorded by my musically talented daughter, and so on.  None of these are available online. Spotify has a Local Files option, so I could theoretically access these things from my local drive, but the files don’t sync across devices, so I’d have to copy them to every device I own, which not an ideal solution.  With Google Play I can simply upload these tracks to the service and access them via Play, so that’s a definite benefit.

I’m trying to decide which of these pros and cons are most important to me as I think about which streaming music service I want to continue using going forward.

I also need to factor in that Google Play Music is going away soon and is being replaced with a new service called YouTube Music.  I have been given an early look at YouTube Music and I’m not sure it’s grabbing me yet. The new pricing model removes the Ad-free YouTube option unless I pay more. I also don’t have the option to upload my own tracks (although I hear that feature may be coming). And while it can be used just an audio playing service, there’s also a focus on music videos which I don’t particularly care about. The interface also seems a little unintuitive (although maybe I just need to get used to it). Overall I haven’t warmed to YouTube Music yet.  It’s possibly another case of Google being too late to the music party – a party that is well and truly being led by Spotify at this point in time – with yet another confused strategy of multiple semi-great apps all competing for our attention.

There are other services I could consider, like Apple Music, but to be honest I am actively avoiding getting sucked into any ecosystem that Apple runs simply because of their proprietary approach to most things.  Deezer has the biggest library of music, and works on my Fitbit Ionic (if you consider the way Fitbit expects you to get music on the device to be “working”). And Amazon?  Meh. Probably not.

Right now, given that Google Play Music is going away, I’m leaning towards a switch to Spotify. Although if the New YouTube Music service adds the ability to upload my own files, then I could be swayed to stay in Google land, even if they do want an extra $2 a month to remove the ads from YouTube.

Wikipedia has a good comparison table of all the streaming music services if you’re interested.

Decisions, decisions!  So tell me… what do you use? And what advice do you have for me?  I’d love you to take the poll about your choice and leave me your thoughts in the Comments!

Which streaming music service do you prefer?

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Header Image CC BY-SA:  Ian Hunter Rant Band on Flickr by bobistravelling