Asking Permission

This entry is somewhat delayed, but it’s also the last flagged item in my inbox. If I write this I can claim some sort of GTD zen like state in time for the new year.

A while ago — back on 5th September, since you ask — I received a message on Flickr from a website called NowPublic. It’s a user-generated news site, I suppose it’s akin to NewsVine.

Anyway, the message was asking my permission to use a couple of photos I’d taken to accompany news stories that had been submitted. It provided a URL through which I could approve or deny their request.

Unfortunately, when I clicked on that URL I was presented with a registration form. To give permission for NowPublic to use my photos I have to register with them. That’s a deal breaker. I’ve got no interest in NowPublic, sorry. I don’t use Digg or NewsVine or any aggregated or user controlled news source. I get plenty enough news to satisfy me from elsewhere on the web.

I’m put off at the idea of registering for services I don’t want at the best of times — I now have a FaceBook account, reluctantly — so I’m certainly not going to register for anyone’s site in response to them asking something of me.

In short: If you want to use something I’ve created, that’s great. If you’re using an automated system to search for content, parse the rel-license microformat and check for Creative Commons licenses. Plenty often you’ll find there’s work just sitting on the internet already giving you permissions for reuse. Just attribute the author at the original source. My Flickr photos are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike license.

If you want to do something that isn’t licensed on the page (such as commercial use, or not sharing your derivative work) then by all means ask, I’ll probably say yes. But don’t use that as a ploy to have me sign up for your service, that’s just rude and will guarantee a ‘no’. If it’s really necessary for me to log in to your system to make the decision, how about enclosing a guest account?

Creative Commons is the great enabler of automated, user generated, distributed content. The rest of the time, we’ll still have polite personal interaction, please.