You’re right, of course: You can’t know for sure that everybody who uses your photo gives you credit. But, then, the same is true of conventional copyright, too.

However, you might try posting a request to hear when someone uses your photos. Or possibly a Google Alert?

But I do have to say that, in my experience, people are pretty good about honoring Creative Commons licenses. The fact that you haven’t set firm restrictions on the use of your work usually makes people more willing to abide by the restrictions you have placed on it.

Of course, as you might expect, the CC license most honored is Attribution — the simplest one.

As for monetizing the blog, a funny thing happened yesterday. I finally got around to installing Adblocker. I went to http://www.johnchow.com — and nothing was there!

Thanks for pointing this out. While I think you’re generally right on the mark, I would still like to consult my parents on this one The guidelines I proposed were somewhat the result of my being annoyed at the fact that people don’t link back, not an absolute interpretation of the CC license.

BUT I *do* promise that I’ll ask them (not that I don’t trust your expertise, but naturally, as any child of lawyer parents, I want to talk to my lawyers - erm, I wanted to mean, parents, hehehe).

One thing though - how would I know that they gave me credit without providing linkage to the original source? I wouldn’t be scouring the depths of the internet to find who hasn’t given me credit AND used my photos. What do you suggest in that case?

By the way, I absolutely loved your presentation. Your style is absolutely lively and you were right on the money! (although you did not talk about monetizing, hehehe!)

I hope you don’t mind a small correction, but licenses are one of my beats, and I think that understanding them is important.

You say that your use of a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license means:

“You should link back to me, DON’T download the photo AND DON’T insert it in your server, instead copy the photo location AND link back to it using the codes for link”

However, the terms of this license (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/) say none of these things. All the license says is that, if you are going to use it, you must:

* give credit to the owner
* use it only for non-commercial purposes
* release any derivatives under the same license

Otherwise, users are free to download, distribute, and alter the work released under this license in any way that they see fit. Linking to the original is simply the most convenient way to use it online.

One thing I forgot to add is that perhaps it would be worth to open a call for volunteers. Setting up the room, getting the coffee and donuts, and doing the seating arrangements is time consuming and all of this work was done entirely voluntarily by Rastin, Jenny, Ash, Teresa and the awesome folks of The Network Hub. I came early to help, and I am sure that they could have used more help than whatever little I did.

I do like your suggestions though…
They should do newbie wp camps, coder camps and general blog talk camps….

And we all needed a place to stick our biz cards or something so we could plug our blogs!!!

Hmmm… this was a first attempt, so hence it was kind of hard to know what people were expecting. The good thing is that people are offering feedback (like what you’re mentioning above). I’ll make sure to pass your comments to the organizers. Thanks for dropping by!

On the more flexible software, I find that being Wordpress.com limits some of the things I want to do, but not many of them =)