Protecting Creative Work in the Age of AI Scraping

As creatives in the digital age, we're facing a new challenge: how to protect our work from indiscriminate scraping by AI companies. While tools like Creative Commons licensing have been a go-to solution, their effectiveness against AI data collection is questionable.

Creative Commons: A False Sense of Security?

I've long relied on Creative Commons to share my work while maintaining some control. My license specifies attribution, non-commercial use, and (previously) share-alike terms. However, I'm beginning to question whether this offers real protection against AI scraping.

The Reality of AI Data Collection

Many companies, often hiding behind research organizations, are scraping vast amounts of online data to train AI models. This process often ignores licensing terms and lacks proper attribution or curation.

Changing Tactics

In response, I've updated my blog's license from "share-alike" to "no derivatives," hoping to prevent AI from copying my style. However, the legal landscape around this issue remains unclear, especially in Europe.

New Technological Defences

A promising development is the creation of tools that embed changes in image files. These alterations are invisible to humans but can disrupt AI training, potentially "poisoning" the dataset. Glaze and Nightshade are two such tools, though they're still in development and can be resource-intensive to use.

The Path Forward

Despite these efforts, I'm still uncertain about how to confidently share my work with those who behave ethically while protecting it from misuse. As creatives, we need to stay informed about these issues and continue seeking effective solutions to protect our work in the AI era.

What are your thoughts on protecting creative work in the age of AI? Have you found any effective strategies?

I've prepared this blog post with some good advice and a little rewording from Claude.AI

Creative Commons and another sting in a free flickr tail

I have been a fan of the Creative Commons style licencing for a long time and use the creative commons licence on most of my flickr posts. I learnt very early that most people ignore these so I am also careful not to post of Flickr or any social media photos that I want to sell or otherwise don’t want copied. My licence is for Attribution (the figure in a circle graphic) which means its free to use if you attribute me as its creator, it is also NonCommercial (the dollar sign with a strike through in the second circle) and Share Alike (the anticlockwise circular arrow in the third circle) which means it can be shared but must not be altered.

For example the 5 fingered hand was posted on flickr over a decade ago, it is of course a crude photo manipulation and a bit o fun to create.  If you do a reverse image search in google images  or tin eye you with find hundreds of uses of this image. Clearly only one (my flickr post) is attributed to me. It has been used on the cover or an Indian Rap record (commercial) and is recognizable in many modification (ie. not share alike). All these are violations of the creative commons licence.  Looking at the stats it has had 2688 views but only 1 fave and no comments. Which makes me concluded that a large proportion of the Flickr viewers paid little regard to flickr’s licencing and probably no real effort has been applied by flickr or the creative commons group to enforce such licences.

On the up side, there are several example of people who obviously have read the licence on other photos of mine and reached out to me wanting to share this photos on blogs, book covers, and tourist information (I have allowed most and all attributed me as the photographer). So the creative commons licence system can work but requires people to acknowledge the creative commons licence. Unfortunately in my experience they are a very small minority. 

Is the answer legal enforcement (I doubt it), shaming the thieves (“feeding the trolls” doesn’t work on the internet because it just gives them more hits) or Education (yes I believe thats the only way.) Unfortunately way to many creative people who want to truly share and collaboratively work with other are being taken advantage of. This is a big #FAIL for Flickr and pretty well all social media, So guys don’t put your head in the sand, start educating.

So I am very sceptical of the latest post on Flickr’s blog about not deleting creative commons images. I certainly acknowledge that allowing creative commons licencing is a great thing (for example google used to in the picasa web album days but no longer do in google photos) and it is the best way to correctly share images (something I am not against and in fact I encourage), Also having the licence details clearly visible as logos and easily access the find out what the means (vis the Some rights reserved v link , which means there is no excuse for those incorrectly reusing the photos. It all sounds nice but in practise I can’t see evidence of any enforcement of attempt to educate. For me I only see this as a kind of pale grey-mail to get me to pay yearly for a pro account. I have more than the thousand photos allowed under creative commons licences photo and if flickr won’t deleted them I would get looked out of posting any more photos. Specifically I see this as not share any extra photos. Such is Life

Sadly it probably means good bye most of my creative common photos I will have to delete you if I want to stay active on flickr and I apologise to any legitimate uses if that causes distress (just contact me and I am sure you can legal still use of any of my image). However I am now even more resolved not to pay an annual fee to just share my work with others (at least not on flickr). Also don’t expect to see my best work on Flickr any more.

Sorry Don MacAskill if I have misinterpreted your intensions. A lot of others are likely to do the same.

A dozen regrets, and reasons I’m not excited about google photo

That 15^th March deadline is approaching fast for the cutting off picasa in favour of google photos. Although I know I must keep using google photo for my blog, but it is clearly wanting in many aspects compared with Picasa web albums, connected to Picasa of the desktop

1. Sharing privately is now very difficult if your family member do not have google accounts. It is possible to send links to selected photos and albums, and whilst you can share publicly to a number of social networks with one click, you need to get a link and then cut and paste to be able to email the link. The URL is not a direct link to the photo anyway but some google address that google needs to translate. All this is tedious and not obvious.
2. Albums in google photos should be called events or photo sessions as they are rigidly saved as the chronology (of the first uploaded photo). Something you are trying to constantly append to (eg a 365 daily photo or year long photos from one location) disappears into the past If you don’t provide an album organization the photos are grouped by date anyway. One small screen and even standard opens because of the album tile size, anything older than a couple of weeks disappears “below the fold” (ie you have to go scrolling to find it).
3. You can no longer choose create common licensing. In fact it would appear you can not copyright images either (at least there is nothing to that effect displayed). The terms of service
4. The People organization is not as comprehensive as the people (face recognition) in picasa
5. Classification of Places and Things are even less successful. What’s more disappointing here is there is no way to redress the misclassifications. (eg. my wife does not appreciate being on the tile labelled things)
6. Why oh Why! was SnapSeed editing removed from google photos? The current edit capabilities are so very limited. Its just sad really.
7. Why is something as fundamental as resize (eg smaller to email) missing?
8. Where is the exposure histogram?
9. What about all the other EXIF & metadata?
10. What has happened to geotagging (location)? Is it merely being used occasionally in the location organization. Why not have an option to display it in photo details?
11. I haven’t been successful in getting google photo autobackup to be selective, either from my phone camera or computer, it just behaves like a vacuum cleaner (and miss-behaves a lot as well, so I have removed it). The android google photos app kept updating itself and then crashing requiring yet another download and re-setup I just gave up and deleted it (and enjoyed having a lot of space back on my phone). If my older android version was not compatible wouldn’t it have been better not to have kept trying to update. No matter its gone also.
12. I’m frequently off the grid (ie no internet access a lot of the time) and I normally load and preview on my laptop computer first (I know I will continue using picasa to do this) THUS the [DEPRECATED] picasa connection makes the cloud based google photos irrelevant to me.

The list could go on but my firm opinion now is that google photos is way below my expectations. Ok Google photos can keep storing images for my blog but is not the place I intend to use to share and store my photos on-line anymore. I definitely intend to keep using picasa on my computers locally but the search is on for an on-line service that makes sharing and organizing easy, that will at a pinch do a reasonable job of simple editing, not strip out metadata and clearly display licensing, eg creative commons &/or copyright. Face recognition and auto organization might be nice but that’s not the deal breakers, lack of control is.

Bad Flickr …not bad panda

For some reason I believed that flickr had stopped stripping the EXIF data out of images when they are shared. This might not sound like a big issue but it is for those that rely on the image having an embedded copyright or creative commons entry in the IPTC and EXIF metadata. This in theory means that anyone that “finds” an image on the net should be able to trace the image back to its rightful owner. The trouble begins when various countries are enacting so called “instagram acts”, which allow “orphaned” photos to be freely used without and copyright or creative commons restrictions. Stripping the meta data away when and image is displayed effectively makes the image an orphan, if the user doesn’t want to take any further effort to find its owner.

I was experimenting with some of the sharing and social network integration in Irista, and happened to notice when irista bought images back from flickr the metadata was stripped. This surprise me because valid meta data is a key check that irista does on upload.

Flickr is only one of the popular services doing it. The only service I have found not doing it is google+

Looks like it is back to always including a visible watermark on flickr, or more probably not uploading important images there anymore.

Weather …or not?

flickr are probably sailing close to the wind on sharing their vast photo collection, yet again! This time it is being handled more sensitively. I received an invite to join a new project they have called the weather project. The basic idea is pretty sound, via a free smartphone app called Yahoo7 Weather, you will be able to see flickr photos of your location showing current conditions, supposedly backed by "the most accurate forecasts" (aka the weather channel with temperatures in Fahrenheit), Now this is an opt-in situation whereby joining the group you can expect to have your images shared, provided that are selected as suitable, by “a team of trained Yahoo Weather photo editors". This is clearly a better way to handle the public sharing of photos. So I say cautiously, congratulations flickr.

The first drawback for me is I can’t install this app on my older android phone, not such a big deal because I already have a weather app that accesses the local bureau of meteorology (even when I’m travelling) and it works fine (and the temperatures are in Celsius. However before joining the group I want to make sure I understood the conditions of use. There is a quite comprehensive FAQ section which did deal with my primary concerns, which where conditions of submitting, who “owns” the photos and attribution. It is also clear that flickr, or yahoo, will not be making any payment for images used. Fair enough,


BUT and its a big issue for me, they don’t mention licencing, and specifically anything about creative commons usage.They do acknowledge that the photo are your works not theirs, but they want you to share them freely, unrestrictedly freely! After the fuss over their wall art I expected flickr to be more upfront about licencing.

The condition include that the photo is yours, your original work. Again fair enough. The clause "You also hereby waive the benefits of any provision of law known as Moral Rights or Droit Moral" does concern me but I'll have to research what it means in Australia, since we do have a similar rights in law, COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT (MORAL RIGHTS) ACT 2000 

I do intend to join the group and very carefully watch how they handle attribution, I don’t expect a lot of traffic from their phone apps, but will be happy if any photo I share are considered worthwhile, since I am very unlikely to share my best ones into a group with rules like the clause above!

Flickr has a rethink on Wall Art

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle around the new flickr feature called Wall Art, which was a curated collection of images from flickr, you can order canvas or board mounted prints. The original description said that “Licenced Artists” would receive 51% (which appears considerably more generous that red bubble and similar services). A real problem was flickr had include a lot of Creative Commons images, without regard to the licence type, and the submitting photographer Many of the flickr community where understandably upset  and flickr has wisely decided to remove any creative commons works, for the moment and refund on any purchases.

I think the scheme is fine but it should be based on an opt-in or at least and invitation to participate for selected images (it is supposedly curated after all). The good outcome is flickr reacted quickly and in tune with their community.

Are you listening google+ and facebook?

Bad Hair Day

The return to cold and windy wintery weather has apparently forced a lot of the birds to ground. This galah suffered the double indignity of being photographed as the wind ruffled his head feathers. Then the image suffered further as I has a play around with textures, layering and boarders in Perfect Photo Suite 8. I’ve also had a play with watermarking, adding a little to alvin’s campaign to bring creative commons licences back to prominence on the social webs

Alvins starts a private CC campaign

Alvin begins his private campaign to get social media site to adopted #creativecommon licences pic.twitter.com/7ITHn8AGbB
— alvinp (@alvinp) July 24, 2014

You can see more of Alvin (and Lila) at meet the people and/or on twitter @alvinp

The Biggest Workspace of Them All

In my post about workspace not workflow, I omitted the biggest workspace, the all pervasive, everywhere at once internet, now often just referred to as the cloud. This oversight may be because I am still uncertain what it has to offer, even what it is? Rather than being on uniform and extensive place, it is a mismatch of different services, formats and connections.

So Why even put stuff there? Well the ease of exchange and sharing is wonderful and services like drop box make it very easy, not to forget email which is over 20 years old now.The other reason often suggested is that social media can be a great way to expose your work to others. In fact all I see is a pervasive pressure to go viral and become an overnight celebrity, that drives a lot of appallingly bad content. So much of what is on offer is boringly the same copy-cat, look at me stuff (eg rise of selfies and LOLcats, need I say more). I am starting to firmly believe it is ok to share what you are working on (as in provenance) your thought and methods and some of your works, but it is more important to be honest in following your creativity (ie don’t worry about the crowd).

I have had negative and unresolved issue with scrapping of my content and unauthorised (aka stealing) of my images. So I only want to share publically via services that offer creative commons licences. I am also not sure that social media is as secure as they pretend. I worry about small things like less desirable people I don’t want to share with, just what is actually being stolen and reused as some one else work or worse sold. I’m very conscious of the filter bubble effect that social media sites like google+ and facebook can create.

So I am very unlike to do much more than token photographic works and art publically in the cloud. I am certainly unlikely to put my entire collection of photos in the cloud even for a backup. Lets see if I am forced to eat my words in the next 10 years!

Copyrights or Copywrongs

Whilst the majority of the social web is just ignoring the issue of personal IP (intellectual Property) creative commons have updated their licences. So what is Creative Commons about? Like its older (pre-net cousin Copyright the “All Rights Reserved” identity) to seeks to defined just how your intellectual property can be accessed and used. Un-like the copyright message it allows you to set the conditions under which your works (photographs, blogs, songs) can be share, reshared or reused. All in relatively easy to understandable English (or a lot of languages).

I have long championed using creative commons licencing when posting photos (and infact any content on the web).  Unfortunately it has not really helped me much in the two problems I have encountered, that’s more to do with the organizations involved, which are google & yahoo (via flickr). However I do see that creative commons is a very sound method. It is not time to throw the baby out with the bath water. So here for those that missed some earlier post is a short history of some bad behaviour on the net and lacl of action by those that should know better.

1. I received a take down notice via yahoo but supposedly from the DCMA to remove a photo mosaic of my own eye (shown above) claiming I had modified the original (owner was not identified) and reposted it. Well the photo mosaic was definitely my own (compare it to my buddy icon) and it was posted on flickr in my wallpaper set, back in 2007. It had also had over a few  thousand views and I did expect others to download it (for personal use on a screen saver) but even reposting it via flickr was fine as well, because the normal sharing process does embed a link back to your photo. Using Tineye I was able to find that there where a lot of repost of the image, several modified, infact one location was used as the background image for a notorious hacker cooperative. I was able to email them and have the image removed without any DCMA threat. Happy ending, seems there is honour in the Hacker community. However in trying to reply to Yahoo I got nowhere. If my emails where received they where ignored. Not such a happy ending, infact no ending.
2. For a while whole sections of my blog where being scrapped and reused in the faux camera review web sites (I won't give names as I don't want then to get any traffic from me). I tried tracking them down but it was a complex multi-national goose chase. So I embedded some "hidden links back to my stories". That was ok for a while but they soon wised up and deleted all my carefully crafted links. The actually acknowledge me by approximately the right name but with a link to what I presume where their sites. All these site were running ad-sense, so I tried to contact google, because they where presumable paying these guys for the traffic my content was attracting to these sites and that would definitely violate my non-commercial condition in my Creative Commons licence. Well despite approximately 9 months of trying a never got an answer, again I gave up getting no answer.
3. I’m very dissapointed that google+ photos no longer display the creative commons licence conditions for photos, although it is still possible to add such licence to an image in the underlying picasa web albums.

So why am I still recommending Creative Commons? I am actually convinced that over legalistic behaviour (particularly associated with publishers and record companies) has created the paranoia and misinformation about copyright, which has contributed to the general public just ignoring it and assuming anything on the net can be copied. I would prefer a world where I can share my creativity, knowledge and perhaps innovation, providing I am acknowledge as the original source and on the extra condition that my work is not sold by others for a profit. I like that others choose to do this too, we can share a better world. Luckily there is a way to notify the wider net community of these conditions using a creative commons licence (see below and on the right hand panel of this blog)

Wandering in the Light by imageo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sharing and Licensing outside Google+

Google+ promotes how easy it is to share photos in Google+ photos. BUT they are only easy to share within the Google+ environment to others also with Google accounts, FURTHER that doesn’t easily extend to Google’s Blogger (which is the main place I share my photos on-line.) This has me totally puzzled because it was easy to share images outside Picasa Web Album via simple html code (which is still the most common way to link photos into any website or blog.) Fiddling around and looking through the unanswered Google forums I see I’m not the only one to notice this (and be ignored by Google). What I have found is you can share an image inside a Google+ post and then get the link to that post (there is a “link to this post” option on the drop down options on the upper right of the post). Alternatively inside blogger and by using the on-line blog posting tools you can select to insert pictures from your Picasa Web Album (not Google+ Photo!). The down side of both of these approaches is it takes extra steps and results with either or both extra and duplicated posts and/or duplicates of the photos in your Google+ photos albums. I’m not convinced the duplicates are second copies but more probably they are different links from different locations. This may not matter anyway if the photos are small (less than 2014 pixels wide) as small photos don’t count in your limit. However if you monitor number of views and +1, they are now potentially spread across up to 4 versions/album views.  The other feature I have been looking for is photo licensing. In Google+ photo there is no mention of photo ownership, or if an image is licences to be shared, say under a creative commons licence I can not find a way to do that either under the google+ photo view or general settings.

Don’t Panic

Things are not desperate yet. You can still do this things via Picasa Web Albums, which is really just an alternative way to view your on-line albums. Unfortunately you can no longer get to that view via the link in Picasa, on your desktop, it now connects to the Google+ photo view, At the moment the following easy to remember link still works- (bookmark it in your browser)

https://picasaweb.google.com/home

Clicking on the Link to this photo gives more options, both a simple URL links and the html code to embed the image in a blog or website page, and image size. The Photo reuse section expands if you click on the button Allow reuse (Creative Commons). You can get some extra details on creative commons sharing in Steve Gill’s Photography blog.

Now you see it, now you don’t

its a while since I’ve mentioned flickr, in fact i really haven’t been posting to it much. Not because of the new format (I’m not really a fan but its much the same as other offerings) its all about “stripping”. They are still stripping the EXIF & IPTC metadata (including details or copyright or creative commons) and the photo ownership details) when the images are downloaded. This unfortunately creates what are known as orphan works (photos that in theory you can not establish the photos ownership). The problem being that in some countries it would appear re-publishing such photos, without the copyright holders permission is acceptable providing the re-publisher acted in good faith in searching for the photos owner, even though that was unsuccessful! See the legal loops holes opening up here!!!

 

Flickr isn’t the only social media service to do this but they are the one I would prefer to use.

This actually posses a big problem for creative people who want to share their work, even using creative commons. For example I don’t mind other using my images providing they acknowledge me, and that they don’t use my images for their own profit. A lot of people have contacted me and all is sweat, Unfortunately using google image search or TinEye I know some of my images have been used all over the place without my permission. So I have reluctantly taken the approach of adding a visible watermark onto my flickr posts. In reality this is not going to stop unauthorised reposting, or help me track down those just stealing the photos. To do that I should just stop posting to flickr (or most other social web sites). I hope it will just make those thinking of using eth photo think twice before downloading it. Flick actually has a good blogging link feature that includes a link back to the original flickr image (which does have the EXIF data intact).

If you want to use one of my images for a blog, or brochure for your organization, or any other reasonable use and you don’t like watermarks just send me an emails

Reverse image finders

With so many social networks flouting the copyright conventions and “claiming” anything posted on-line is “free” to share (aka steal) and a few like Pintrest  and Weheartit going even further, directly or indirectly encouraging their users to link to if not post things of interest (aka other peoples work). Ok Pinterest does mention you should credit your sources in their Pin Etiquette page, but a quick look at their site reveals this is a hollow request, my very superficial review suggested most pinned links (when they exist) are more likely to be for self-promotion or to a clearly non-original source.  Sigh!
The problem is acknowledgement and linking back to the original Intellectual Property creator/owner, Creative Commons is a nice framework to handle this on the internet but so few social network tools (including google+) even display the creative common licence or the linking tools provide the name/URL of the source (flickr is the one exception I can think of at the moment). I don’t mind is my work if reposted by other I just want some acknowledgement and I don’t want them to make a direct profit by selling my work so I mainly use the CC BY ND licence.  However it is beginning to looking a bit depressing.The current reality is, if you post on a social network, you must expect your work to be taken. Sigh!

 

How can you findout if your images is being “responsibly” used on-line?

If Google Images is a hand grenade, TinEye is a sniper rifle.

…wired magazine's how to wiki

The net is a wide open place these days and there are millions on millions of places to look. So just keeping your eyes open when you surf the net may yield very little success. The better strategy at the moment is to use a reverse image search tools. Luckily there are already two decent free and easy to use ones available. I didn’t bother to investigate the expanding number “ransomware” applications, (ie ones that promise the world, charge you a lot and probably just secretly use one of the options below).
Google Images, has been offering a reverse image search since June last year. Not too many folk realised this. All you have to do is drag an image onto the google image search box or paste the URL of a location you have posted your image and the search works exactly as you expected it present you with a matrix of near matching images. Unfortunately they may not be very exact matches and you might still have to do a fair bit of manual looking around but it is a great start.
TinEye is another free service that specifically addresses finding like images, using its own pixel based fingerprinting techniques to scan through its own databases (which are extensive and growing but way short of complete) of fingerprints obtained by crawling the web for images. This doesn’t guarantee your searches will find dark corners of the web or even well lit (popular) ones but it will find close matches and slightly modified versions (including adding text and overwriting visible watermarks). You can help TinEye to keep a watch on your images by submitting an application (its a XML sitemap of images, so a fair bit of Web tech savvy is required) for TinEye’s robots to crawl your site, but priority is given to legitimate stock photo collections and images carrying a clear creative commons licence.

As the wired post suggests these service are also very useful to locate the original source of an image so it can be correctly reposted with acknowledgement. Thus potentially avoiding a litigious band of lawyers trying to sue the pants off you, sending you nasty and threatening letters when a polite cease and desist was all that was necessary.

I must admit I was a little shocked that one of my images was being used by a hacker’s collective. However they did remove my image when I asked nicely. Another of my images appears in over 300 locations, most that I checked not acknowledging I was the creator. Sigh!
Yet there is a bright side and I wish to pat on the back all those that have contacted me (and I have in most case said yes to republishing my images) and those that correctly linked back to my blogger post or my flickr photostream. Well done you guys.

A wish for PhotoContests to use Creative Commons

I noticed Catherine Hall‘s invite on Google+ for a TWIT Photo contest and investigated because TWIT is a web savvy group but I was discouraged by the same old same old detail in the conditions of entry.

Once upon a time I entered a lot of on-line photo contest, they are fun and a good way to get recognition but I no longer do so because I now always read the terms and conditions of entry. They normally have been written by lawyers (or cut and pasted from rules written by lawyers) and have terms like “irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide perpetual” when all they really want is the right to publish the winning and running up photos. Unfortunately that click that you accept the competition conditions is assumed to mean you have in theory have given away your normal common law copyright rights to those mentioned in the conditions I’m not a lawyer but such “agreements” may not be all that enforceable “worldwide” (specifically outside the USA) and are really only there for the USA-centric litigious fantasyland of sue or be sued. It is my observation that having lawyers and agents involved with the threat of litigation just suck the creative side dry rather than feeding and encouraging it. I don’t want to play in that space.

I for one want photo competitions to just use the creative commons guidelines. They are really ideal for what I understand the competition organizer’s want, which to be able to reproduce the photos without expressed permission of the photographer (this is the basic Attribution 3.0 license. CC BY, and the author is granting the right to share and adapt the work. The 3.0 is just the current version of the creative commons licenses. This does allows for commercial use of the work (because it is not excluded, in the same way it is usually not mention in the legalistic competition rules) Commercial use might including the photo in a book which is for sale. It is this right to potential commercial use that creative types should worry about.  Fortunately there is a nice creative common solution, the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license CC BY-NC. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms. In other words you are sharing your work buy not for other to make money from. Any completion organizer should still be happy with this.

So I would be happy to click acceptance on a competition that just requires those entering must license their entry Attribution-NonCommercial, CC BY-NC. End of conditions.

Other photographers might be happy to enter competition with a requirement for Create Commons Attribution, CC BY. Which I think is all the TWIT team really intended after all.

Flickr and Picasa Web Album are examples of two web services that understand this need to include the creative common licensing in their web based display of any photo or art work and including the ability to have default settings. If you look at any single photo in either of these services you will see the little CC logo, or failing that a convention copyright (all rights reserved logo). The intention in Google+ is not as clear in that creative commons isn’t found in the help forum and sharing images bring you to discussion of public versus sharing with your circles. In theory because Google+ images are also in picasa web album they get a default license (which is for me at least is a full copy right). I can change that in picasa web album for specific photos or albums but anyone looking at the image(s) on Google+ will not see these CC license logos. I think this is an important small step for Google+ to fix right now

The big advantage of creative commons for content creators is they are don’t affect the author’s moral rights to the intellectual property and that the author could also grant waivers or stricter conditions to others wanting to use the same image.