There is widespread misunderstanding about what CC and other free licenses permit and require. Especially in cases that don’t even mention the licensing (e.g., the Jerusalem Post article) and make it appear than I granted direct permission, I am considering contacting them to demand compensation. I’m happy for my work to be used under the terms of one of the licenses, but the whole point of using copyleft licenses is their viral nature, to increase the pool free content. So publications that abuse or ignore these licenses need to get the message that using freely licensed content without following the license is the same as using an AP photo or other professional photo without paying for the right to do so.

I do find it a little bit appalling the way World News Network uses my photos (and indeed, with their whole business model), since they aspire to be a news source but use my photos in totally misleading ways. But that’s an issue of journalistic integrity rather than intellectual property.

I’m sorry to hear about your experience on Green Wikia. It’s not surprising that (like Associated Content) Wikia takes a looser approach to copyright violation than Wikimedia projects, since much of the Wikimedia community has an ideological stake in free culture and its legal dimensions while Wikia is for-profit and Green Wikia users probably don’t have much stake in the free culture movement.

I recently found all sorts of content on Green Wikia that had been lifted verbatim from copyrighted sources. When I pointed out a few of these most glaring acts of theft, the Wikia reaction was to… wait for it…

…block my account until March 2009.