Not that, in our current Photobusted state, there’s much glory to go around, but still.

The sharp-eyed and sharper-brained among you will notice that not long ago I began making my images live links to their source websites (at least for the first occurance; after that it gets harder to keep track). It seems to me that this is the least I can do for the people who make and upload images, and it gives them a bit of the Googlejuice; also, I’ve yet to have a complaint about it.

It all started in this post, which was linked to by ECNPA, a photography association, some of whose forum members became seriously irate that I’d used the images at all. As you can see from the first comment, the photographers in question weren’t nearly so outraged, but it nudged me into thinking about ways to give credit where credit was due: after all, always I do that for text, no exceptions. Why should other art forms be treated differently? And this was the best workaround I could come up with; it shows the image in context and has, at least once, resulted in a commenter leading us to the actual, original source, rather than the bogus blogscraper that I’d gotten it from originally.

So I’d encourage people to post images, and to properly accredit those images with a link. The webmasters will like that as well. The photo agencies currently suing Perez Hilton have publically stated that if they had only been given credit for the photos this wouldn’t have gone to court, and I for one will take them at their word although it must be said that it’s much easier for someone dirt poor to face a lawsuit because the entire realm of monetary awards resides entirely in the theoretical sphere, and everyone knows it. They may or may not be sincere.

Still, picture it: 

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