Attribution
This page explores attribution requirements for the DC BY license that are inextricably bound with a design of DC registry.
To provide context, we start at looking at current Creative Commons attribution best practices.
CC BY attribution
Best practices for attribution from Creative Commons guidelines licensed under CC BY 4.0
This is an ideal attribution for CC licenses: “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Because:
- Title? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco”
- Author? “tvol” - linked to his profile page
- Source? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” - linked to original Flickr page
- License? “CC BY 2.0” - linked to license deed
Link equity flow:
- Author -> to Flickr
- Source -> to Flickr
- License -> to creative commons website
DC BY attribution
Variant 1: Static attribution
“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol is licensed under DC BY 0.1
Because:
- Title? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco”
- Author? “tvol” - linked to the author's domain
- Source? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” - linked to the image page on the author's domain
- License? “DC BY 0.1” - linked to license deed
Link equity flow:
- Author -> to author's website
- Source -> to author's website
- License -> to decentralized commons website
Limitations:
- An author may not have a domain/website
- Domain registration fees may be too high
- Domain registration may not be renewed in time and domain will be snapped up by cybersquatters
Variant 2: Static attribution
“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol is licensed under DC BY 0.1
Because:
- Title? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco”
- Author? “tvol” - linked to the author's page on the DC registry
- Source? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” - linked to the image page on the DC registry
- License? “DC BY 0.1” - linked to license deed
Link equity flow:
Link equity is transferred from registry URIs to URIs on the author's domain using rel="canonical" tag attribute.- Author -> to registry domain -> to author's website
- Source -> to registry domain -> to author's website
- License -> to decentralized commons website
Limitations:
- Registry domain becomes a single point of failure for link equity of all creators
Variant 3: Static attribution
“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” with auxiliary registration created by tvol with auxiliary registry account at tvol is licensed under DC BY 0.1
Because:
- Title? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco”
- Author? “tvol” - linked to the author's URI on the DC registry primary and auxiliary domain
- Source? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” - linked to the image URI on the DC registry primary and auxiliary domain
- License? “DC BY 0.1” - linked to license deed
Link equity flow:
Link equity is transferred from registry URIs to the URIs on the author's domain using rel="canonical" tag attribute.- Author -> to primary registry domain -> to author's domain
- Author -> to auxiliary registry domain -> to author's domain
- Source -> to primary registry domain -> to author's domain
- Source -> to auxiliary registry domain -> to author's domain main
- License -> to decentralized commons website
Limitations:
- Complexity of primary/auxiliary registry setup
- Attribution verbosity
Variant 4: Dynamic attribution
“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” created by tvol and registered with DC registry is licensed under DC BY 0.1
Dynamic attribution requires updates to the linked URIs to mirror updates done by the creator with the registry. Convenient automatic updates of attribution are only possible for websites that use JavaScript. Every time user visits the page, JS script loads the attribution data directly from the registry.
Because:
- Title? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco”
- Author? “tvol” - linked to the author's URI on their domain
- Source? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” - linked to the image URI on creator's domain and image URI on the registry
- License? “DC BY 0.1” - linked to license deed
Link equity flow:
Link equity is transferred from registry URIs to the URIs on the author's domain using rel="canonical" tag attribute.- Author -> to author's domain
- Source -> to registry domain -> to author's domain
- Source -> to author's domain main
- License -> to decentralized commons website
Limitations:
- Not applicable to non-digital media
- Greatly increases complexity
- Requires constant maintenance
- More difficult to understand