I’ve been thinking a lot about transaction costs lately, and how they’re at the core of what Creative Commons tries help the world with. By giving permission in advance by using a CC license and metadata, creators can lower the transaction costs of distributing their work. Aliza Sherman relates a story over at WebWorkerDaily that clearly demonstrates the benefits of switching to CC licensed work for blogging:

I recently had an email exchange with a photographer. He was unhappy that I used an image from his web site on one of my blogs without a proper credit or link back to his site. I took a look at the blog page in question – from 2005 – and noted that indeed, I did not credit him or link back to his site. So I removed the image immediately and replaced it with a Wikipedia Creative Commons image.

Aliza also posts some legal perspectives from lawyer Deena B. Burgess, regarding the legality of hosting, embedding, and linking to images found online. If you’re not already using CC licensed imagery for your blog posts, her answers may give you some reasons to reconsider.