: Is it necessary to attribute Creative Commons licensed art? There are tons of sites out there with free graphics. You can find a bunch of these sites through freepik.com. It seems that 99%

@YK2262411

If your main concern is not wanting to mess up your web design with bylines attached to every graphic, be aware that you generally have some flexibility with how you give attribution. In particular, you may be able to give attribution in HTML comments that don't actually show up on the page.

The full legal text of the international version of CC-BY-3.0 includes this description of the "BY" requirement (emphasis added):


If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.


The credit attribution has to be "reasonable" for the medium, but must be included in any comparable credits. In other words, if you have a footer or similar element on the webpage where you or your company as web designers are credited, then you should probably include credit for the graphics there:


Site design by Nifty-Doodle WebPages, with graphics from Cool CC Graphic Source and Other Cool CC Graphic Source.


However, if you don't have any comparable credit on the main page that implies ownership of the graphics, then I don't see anything wrong with putting the attribution in the source code.

However, do make an effort to verify that the images you're using are actually licensed as the site claims. At the very least, consider how much of a hassle it would be to re-do your design if the copyright holder issues a take-down request. Or an invoice for royalties.

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@Gail6891361

The material is copyrighted. You can use it under the terms of the CC licence offered, you can negotiate with the copyright owner for a different license.

Or find another resource that has a license you're happy with. Or develop your own.

Either it's worth doing this right, or it isn't worth doing. Pick one.

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@Hamaas979

It's absolutely necessary to attribute any third party graphics that your site utilizes as specified by the license agreement. Just because there might be other sites out there not properly attributing artwork doesn't make it okay at all. If the icon is so "basic" or "minor" that you think it's silly to give attribution, then consider just creating the artwork you require yourself.

Whether or not the site you're downloading the art from has the rights to distribute the files under a CC license is certainly a judgement call. Does the site look sketchy and contain stock artwork that you can find on more "legitimate" sites for a paid license? Probably best to avoid it. It's in your best interest to protect yourself in these cases, exercise due diligence to confirm the legitimacy of the license so that you have plausible deniability if any issues do crop up down the road.

The biggest re-assurance that you're safe to proceed is if the site lists the actual author (and even better, links to their personal web page). If you can trace the origin back to an actual person, the chances are better that the CC license is legitimate and not just ripped from another website.

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@Si6392903

If the license says it should be attributed, I don't think it should be questionned if it should be attributed or not. These are the conditions and you are free to make your own visual if the conditions are not right for you. Then again, I am fairly sure that in common practice, a lot of people don't bother attributing even when the license requires it which doesn't mean that you should do the same. It is still not right or professional to use an image without attributing to the source when it's requested.

As for knowing if the license is real and not just a default license, I would guess that it is the site's responsibility to manage that information (and potentially, I would believe the responsability lies in the user who uploaded the image on the site since he has probably agreed to terms that says he is the creator of the image). It's always better to be careful. I've seen a Photoshop brush distributed on a CC license before and it originated from a vector image distributed by iStockPhoto.

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