Aloha, I guess I can use Flickr Images on my website if they are Creative Commons, but do they need to be marked with "use commercially"? My website is not a webshop. It's just a normal site with a few hundred pages of content, but there are ads, affiliate links, etc. Concerning the attribution. Does it need to be a link or can I just write something like "Photo by Obama, Flickr"? (I don't want to throw my precious linkjuice around...) Thanks, Mads
Well I'm sure people don't want to just throw their photos around. Zen Habits uses a lot of photos from Flickr and they've all got a caption back to the person who created them. It's probably best to e-mail the owner of the photograph and ask for permission before using it.
It would definitely be best practice to contact the creator and request permission to use the image. As for the creative commons it should allow commercial use since you generate revenue from ads that is seen as commercial usage. Also be aware that you can run into cases where the image was uploaded by someone other than the copyright holder and thus the person had no right to release it under Creative commons. That's why it would be best to get written confirmation and permission from the author. In the case where the image was uploaded without permission you'd then at least have some recourse to show that you acted in good faith.
Isn't it good enough faith to have found it as a Creative Commons pic on Flickr? Contacting the authors will take a lot of time and trouble if there are for example 100 pic.
If your publication is a for-profit endeavour (like a web site that earns money from ads) then editorial use of images is considered commercial. So you'd need to seek permission, or constrain yourself to images marked "use commercially".