I checked out the new Photodropper WordPress plugin lately, which looked like the gem of a plugin I have been looking for recently. It allows you to search Flickr’s vast pool of Creative Commons pictures straight from WP’s writing page, and insert the chosen pictures complete with attribution links and all.
Sounds sweet as pie right? Well don’t go jumping around naked in glee just yet, there’s more to it than that.
For one the provided attribution is flawed. Instead of doing what’s said in the CC license legal text they only provide a link back to the original author. The original name of the work is not mentioned, and there is no link to the original CC license used either.
Here’s what the CC FAQ says about it:
the proper way of accrediting your use of a work when you’re making a verbatim use is: (1) to keep intact any copyright notices for the Work; (2) credit the author, licensor and/or other parties (such as a wiki or journal) in the manner they specify; (3) the title of the Work; and (4) the Uniform Resource Identifier for the work if specified by the author and/or licensor.
They actually link from the Creative Commons icon links back to a page on their own site, instead of the original website. I’m not sure why they did this, and it surely strikes me as odd.
Another weird thing is that the plugin is copyrighted for some reason, and not published under an open source license as is the case with most WordPress plugins. That’s their choice of course, and perhaps they are quite liberal about changes to the plugin, but there is no way to tell if you’ll get your arse suid if you alter the code…
I’m hoping the next version will fix these shortcomings though. For now however, I’ll have to resort to tediously crafting my CC attribution links myself.
(Picture “CC on orange” by yamabobobo, some rights reserved)