Proper Citation

[auld argonian]

Having seen a couple of long running threads closed because of complaints about images being posted without proper credit being given to the owner of the image, I was wondering if there is an acceptable way of providing documentation of the images that would pass muster here. I ask this because determining the actual ownership of most images is a hazy business at best.

The internet being the mish-mash that it is, I just can't see that there IS a foolproof way to do any citations....any image that is not one's own but which one wants to share with the forum stands a very good chance of having such a convoluted pedigree that you can't depend on its provenance....bearing that in mind, only an image that has been created by the poster him/herself can be posted without the chance of pissing somebody somewhere off. You post an image and cite the original site that you found it on and then months later somebody complains that the site that you found the image on poached it from their site....where does it end?

I sympathize with the commercial interests here that have images of their merchandise poached by other merchants...that's just wrong. Problem that I see particularly holds with historical images, many of which are photographs that are not unique unless they're daguerreotypes or one of the other early one-of-a-kind processes...someone owns a copy of a photo and scans it up...my understanding is that the original photographer actually owns the rights to the image, not someone who merely owns a print...can the scanner legitimately protest and claim ownership of the image?

Personally, anytime I post an image on the internet, I consider it "lost"...I take into consideration the fact that anybody can lift it, strip my copyright notice off in photoshop and repost it. I'm not into this free-for-all attitude that seems to prevail on the internet in general but it seems that some good, constructive discourse is being choked off here.

Is there an acceptable form for proper citation?

Best

AA