Testing the dinosaur of image copyright law
by Martin Belam, 29 May 2007
Scientists have discovered that apparently predatory dinosaurs could swim, in a story covered by Wired's Science blog last week. They used one of my Flickr photographs to illustrate it.
The photograph was on Flickr with a Creative Commons License, and Wired have credited me, which is fine.
Well, probably fine, unless you are the Natural History Museum.
I suspect that they will feel that they ought to be getting the credit and the link-love for their animatronic dinosaur, rather then me.
If the museum allows photography within the exhibition (which I think it does), then I doubt they'd be complaining...
I'm sure that neither Wired or I have broken the letter of copyright law. I just guess the museum would probably rather people know that it was their expensive animatronic model dinosaur pictured in the article, rather than something "Martin Belam" made from an Airfix kit...
My compliments for the picture! It's a good one. I was just wondering, did the link actually prove worthwhile? Has it generated any traffic or business for you?