ibudiallo / imgcopyright

This is an attempt to define a new HTML attribute for the image tag that defines the copyright held.

Introducing the copyright img attribute

<img src="flyingcat.jpg" alt="Flying cat" copyright="cc-by The Cat" />

This is an optional attribute that will complement the image tag. It is not a replacement of stating the copyright info on the page, but it will be a good attempt to notify the browser and web crawlers of the copyright held by this picture.

The copyright attribute can take the values currently defined by the creative commons and then some.

Type	CC Notation	Copyright Attribute Notation
Attribution	CC BY	cc-by
Attribution-NoDerivs	CC BY-ND	cc-by-nd
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike	CC BY-NC-SA	cc-by-nc-sa
Attribution-ShareAlike	CC BY-SA	cc-by-sa
Attribution-NonCommercial	CC BY-NC	cc-by-nc
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs	CC BY-NC-ND	cc-by-nc-nd
Public domain	CC 0	cc-0
Non Creative Commons	©	c

The attribute can also include the year, and additional information. Here is an image correctly tagged with the appropriate copyrights:

CC BY Ibrahim Diallo idiallo.com/photography 2015

And the html code looks like this:

<img copyright="cc-by 2015 Ibrahim Diallo idiallo.com/photography" src="http://cdn.idiallo.com/photo/36/ants.jpg" alt="Ants" />

This is an attempt to create a new attribute that will make it much easier to determine the copyright grounds of an image programmatically. If successful, the attribute can be used by other tags including but not limited to audio and video.

This initiative is not to fight piracy, or create a weird behavior on the browser to prevent copying. I find it very hard to determine the license on images on certain sites and the owners never reply to email. So this can extend the work the Creative Commons has already done and get everyone on the same page.

Under the img tag definition on w3.org, we can add a new section to properly define the attribute. The content and functionality of the attribute are in no way final. I am open to suggestions visit the github repo to contribute.

Find the original blog post here: HTML image copyright license attribute initiative

Oh and I am not affiliated with the W3C.

imgcopyright's Issues

Question: what is the status

Hi!
Just wanted to know what is the status of this? Did you get any W3C feedback?

`license` or `legal` in favor of `copyright~?

copyright is a country-law specific term which does not apply to all countries. For example in germany we have a law called Urheberrecht which handles similar aspects but it also distiguishes in some certain ways (for example it is only possible to grant usage rights or license those, but it is not possible under any circumstances to sell or give away these rights from the original person that created the content).

I therefore would like to propose a more generic term for the attribute name like license or legal[-note] or so.

Great initiative by the way, looking forward to an issue or PR upstream 🙂

That being said I am not a lawyer and my understanding / interpretation of the laws may be insufficient or wrong.