Like most breaking news stories coverage of it was widespread and constant. However, this story was somewhat unique in that the first images and reports came not via the major news outlets or even regular blogs, but over Twitter and TwitPic.

Specifically, it was Janis Krumswho uploaded the first images. He was a passenger on a nearby ferry that responded to the downed plane and snapped photos of the incident as the boat raced to rescue passengers.

But as the story began to spread, it seemed that the fog of war began take over. Though it was well-known Krums was the photographer, it appeared at least once on MSNBC under a different attribution. This angered many supporters of citizen journalism and caused an uproar on Flickr.

However, it it appears that the mistake was an innocent one. Though it is unclear if MSNBC corrected the attribution on their site, they did perform at least one interview with Krums and identified him as the photographer on the air. It appears that the mis-attribution on the site was an accident.

Sadly though, during a crisis, mistakes are a part of journalism. Even the best sources get facts wrong, misspeak, are at times unclear and draw wrong conclusions. Though the better journalists and news organizations work to minimize these mistakes, they are inevitable.

Though we can take steps to mitigate and prevent such errors, they can not be completely avoided. To prevent these types of problems moving forward, it is going to take a concerted effort from a lot of different groups to ensure that citizen journalists always get their due.

Fixing the Problem

The problem itself is pretty straight forward. When a news organization is trying to cover a breaking story over television, radio and the Web, as many modern companies do, it is chaos trying to get all of the facts together. The main goal of the reporter is to find out the facts of the case and report on them. Obviously there is a strong importance of correctly citing sources, but it is more important to make sure that you have the facts right, especially when you are dealing with life and death situations.

If you’ve spent time in a news room, you know well how chaotic it can be. It is easy to see how attribution could be lost and, in the case of MSNBC, I feel certain that photo credit of “MSNBC TV” is just a default credit applied to all unattributed images.

Was it sloppy reporting? Yes. Should MSNBC have done better? Yes. But was it an honest mistake made in the midst of a very chaotic day? Yes.

Fixing this problem is not going to be easy and it is and it is going to come up repeatedly as mainstream media outlets lean more on user-generated content. Preventing these types of mistakes will require both media outlets making an even more concerted effort to attribute everything correctly and users making a stronger push to mark their work.

However, the technology is working against this. The most immediate means of getting such images out are largely personal and anonymous. Twitter and TwitPic, for example, can be traced back to a username but how much information that gleans is up to the user. Also, cell phone cameras typically do not embed the needed EXIF data to identify the photographer and most do not have the ability to set such information, unlike with traditional digital cameras.

It is entirely possible that a user could snap a photo of an important event, shoot it out over Twitter, be the first to report something and have no one know who they are. Though that wasn’t what happened in this case, Krums’ name was known and widely-reported on, these new technologies clearly add new challenges to mainstream media when it comes to identifying sources of information.

How citizen journalists and mainstream media overcome these challenges will remain to be seen, but it is clear from this story that there are at least a few snags in the line.

Best Steps

Right now, there isn’t a lot that can be done to prevent these kinds of incidents, at least not from the viewpoint of a potential citizen journalist.

That being said, I would definitely take the following steps if you think you might ever catch an image CNN could want:

1. If possible add your name and information to the EXIF data of your camera. Make sure it is embedded in every image.
2. Be sure that your name and contact information are on every site you post your work.
3. When uploading an image or video, provide all of the information that you can, including location, tags, etc.
4. Try not to submit a file to too many places at once. Doing so can cause confusion as to where the source and doesn’t appear to greatly speed up how fast it is seen.
5. If you see a mis-attribution, try to correct request a correction as soon as possible. The problem is that one mistake leads to a dozen as others pick up the story.

These are basic tips but they are also things that most would-be citizen journalists are not in the habit of doing. If you one gets in the habit now, then they will be prepared when and if something major does happen and they get that prized image or video.

Conclusions

The good news in all of this is that Krums does not seem to have suffered any ill effects from this mistake. The overwhelming majority of mentions have been correctly attributed and he is widely known as the photographer. He’s given interviews on MSNBC and NBC, both of which identify him as such and most of the mentions on the Web have included his name.

Despite the mistake, Krums is getting his due credit.

In the end, it is clear that MSNBC made an error. The company and its Web team should have done better. However, throwing around blame for an obvious accident doesn’t make any sense. There is a much bigger issue about how to properly attribute citizen media going forward. This is something outside of the normal mainstream journalism paradigm and the policies they have for tracking ownership and providing credit do not neatly apply in many cases.

Solving this issue is going to take an effort by citizen journalists, news organizations and even the hardware and communications companies that help people get news and information out.

We have tools that let us capture images and video from any news story and instantly beam it out to millions of people, however, we now need to make sure those tools come with the same protections that ensure such use is attributed correctly.

After all, if we don’t know who is behind a story, not only only do we not know who to thank for getting the news out there, but we don’t know if we can trust what is being reported.

Hat Tip: Melanie Phung

Yepic, previously covered on this site in late 2006, is a site that allows its users to “buy and sell information about anything” and enticed bloggers and other authors to sell premium content through their service.

The email, which was sent by Yepic CEO Richard Tripp, said the following:

“Just an official note that we will be taking the website, Yepic.com, down on June 8, 2008 and will not be re-launching thereafter. If you have any questions, please email me…”

It has been a mixed bag for user-generated content in recent months. Premium user-generated content sites, such as Blogburst and Associated Content, have done well while others, including Yepic and Scoopt Words, have closed down.

Clearly this field is still very unstable but it appears that there is still plenty of interest, with companies such as RightsAgent, from the people originally behind Lisensa, continuing to explore new options.

This announcement comes just over a month after Mashable discovered an author at the site plagiarizing their content, an incident covered here in episode 35 of the Copyright 2.0 Show.

This move represents a major step on the part of Associated Content to prevent plagiarism by its members and another major client for Attributor, which previously signed both the AP and Reuters as clients.

This will be a major test for both services. Associated Content, which pays money to submitters at the site, will have to decide how to respond to potential cases of plagiarism. This will have to include both incidents involving its submitters as well those involving others on the Web. Attributor, in turn, will see how well their technology detects duplicated content in a very fast-paced setting and in a manner it might not have been originally designed for.

It is unclear at this time if Associated Content will be using Attributor’s image matching service in addition to its text matching tools.

While Associated Content has always utilized human editors to help with quality control at the site, it is clear that, with so much content being posted, automation is going to be critical in effectively filtering out questionable works. Attributor seems to be rapidly positioning itself as a leader in this area and this latest deal only furthers that stance.

Hopefully this partnership will help avoid future embarrassing incidents for Associated Content and let them move past these issues.

Disclosure: I am a consultant for Attributor.

So, before I look forward into 2008, I want to take a moment and look back over the year that was starting with the predictions and previews that I put forth a year ago, almost to the day.

If you want to laugh at me for being wrong and making a few guesses that, in hindsight, were more than a little wrong, this is your chance. If you’re looking to hire me as a psychic, this will probably completely kill me chances.

Prediction 1: Content Licensing Grows Up

2007 was supposed to be the year that content licensing grew up and became not just the norm, but a business model. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.

The reasons for the prediction were clear. Companies such as Lisensa had just started and others were rumored to be started. However, Lisensa ended up not gaining much traction and the other companies failed to materialize.

This isn’t to say that it was a bad year for content licensing. Creative Commons introduced the CC+ initiative, which in turn enabled the promising rights company RightsAgent, from the same people who founded Lisensa, only this time with much better backing (More on RightsAgent to come).

Things did indeed start to “grow up” in this area but it was much too late in the year. All in all, content licensing did not live up to its potential in 2007 but may be poised to make another run at it in 2008.

Prediction 2: Copyright Tools Get Smart

This is similar to the first prediction in that a great deal of progress was made, but the full potential was nowhere near realized.

Copyscape, for example, made vast improvements in its monitoring of content theft. However, all of the content theft tracking tools remain, fundamentally, dumb. They don’t support licenses, detect attribution or spot commercial use.

Attributor holds the greatest promise in this area and they launched their service this year. However, their current offerings are just for corporations such as Reuters and the Associated Press. A version of their service for bloggers and Webmasters is due in early 2008.

This may easily fall in the category of predictions that turn out to be right, but were just made a year or two too early. 2008 holds a great deal of promise for these tools, it is just a shame that 2007 didn’t see more.

Prediction 3: More False DMCA Notices

This one was a bit too easy. But it certainly came to fruition, largely fueled by YouTube. Consider these three examples:

• The Rational Response Squad suffered a series of takedowns and bannings at the hands of ideological opponents over public domain clips.
• Prince secured the removal of a 29-second video of a dancing baby due to the fact his song “Let’s Go Crazy” was playing in the background.
• Viacom demanded the takedown of a clip from their Web 2.0 Junk Show even though the clip was, almost entirely, the property of the person who posted it to YouTube.

This was easily the safest prediction I made but it still held a few surprises. The biggest one, for me, was that most of the false notices weren’t due to malice, but due to faulty copyright protection systems. Either bad algorithms or overworked humans.

Still, despite the attention these incidents attracted, the number of false notices remained fairly low, especially when compared to the number of legitimate ones filed.

Prediction 4: Hosts to Rethink DMCA Policies

This one is hard to say. The hosts I’ve spoken to have definitely been looking at their DMCA polices and making adjustments, but there has been little public attention given to this.

YouTube, for example, has been the subject of both a billion-dollar lawsuit and the highest number of questionable DMCA notices. Yet, their actual practices remain very much cloaked in secrecy and unchallenged.

All in all, I think I was pretty off the mark with this prediction and it may have been more a case of wishful thinking than anything. Sadly, this one does not seem to be poised to change in 2008, that is, barring any major changes.

Prediction 5: Lawsuit Outlook

In this section, I made a pair of predictions. The first was that the Perez Hilton case would be settled out of court by the end of the year and that the Michael Crook case would be ongoing.

Whoops.

Though I rarely get to be wrong twice in the same prediction, I was here. I not only underestimated Crook’s resolve to dodge, delay and stall his lawsuit but I severely overestimated Hilton’s ability to see a good deal and take it.

As of this writing, the Michael Crook case was famously settled in March and the Hilton case is still ongoing, with other lawsuits tacked on for good measure.

I have to admit, I was wrong, dead wrong, on this one. Just goes to show how unpredictable these things can be.

Prediction 6: Legal Tide Turns Against RIAA

With the Jammie Thomas ruling grabbing so many headlines this year, it is very tempting to try and deny I ever made this prediction in the first place. However, I don’t think it is that cut and dry.

The RIAA has had some severe legal setbacks, the most recent being a case it was forced to drop for using an “unlicensed investigator”, namely MediaSentry. Furthermore, they’ve started trying some contradictory and even insane legal arguments in order to keep their ongoing cases afload.

It is hard to tell if the legal tide is turning or has turned against the RIAA this year. We won’t know that until some time next year when the next round of rulings come down.

The Thomas verdict was a win for the RIAA, no doubts there, but it was just one case in the year. It won’t mean anything if it is their only win.

Prediction 7: UGC Revolt

Revolution was indeed in the air this year at UGC sites. The most famous being the Digg User Revolt of 2007.

However, these revolts, big and small, were not over wanting some of the money, as previously predicted, but over wanting control over the sites.

For example, the revolt above dealt with the removal of an encryption key used to protect HD-DVDs and the alleged censorship of the topic. Other mini-revolts dealt with the desire for a picture section, the new comments system. Similar ones on Reddit dealt with desired features and algorithm change requests.

Users of popular UGC sites are clamoring for dollars yet, but are definitely trying to assert their authority. It seems that I was at least somewhat right on the event, but very wrong about the reason.

Conclusions

In the end, I had one prediction dead on, one dead wrong and five somewhere in between. It was a mixed bag to put it generously but not altogether surprising given how unpredictable this news area tends to be.

Though I can’t say I’m proud of the predictions I made last year, I’m not terribly discouraged either. After all, things could have easily gone much worse.

But what really surprised me this year wasn’t any of the items above, but rather, a shift in the conversation about copyright and content theft on the Web.

Previously, the argument over these issues has been dominated by the two extremes. One group wanting copyright to be little more than a fantasy on the Web, the other wanting the strictest interpretation possible.

Though the extremes were definitely vocal this year, 2007 may well be remembered as the year that, despite everything that happened, cooler heads prevailed.

After all, Creative Commons thrived, spammers were battled and attribution was fought for. The “Us vs. Them” mentality that has thrived on the Web in years gone by is weakening. It is being replaces that artists need to be supported for their works, that piracy is wrong but, at the same time, creativity can not be stifled.

We may finally be pushing our way toward a middle ground. Though it may be optimistic of me to say so and I certainly wouldn’t call that a prediction for 2008, things certainly do “feel” better on the Web than they did just a year ago.

Let us hope that trend continues.

Disclosure: I am a consultant for Attributor.

Unfortunately, I just stumbled across this video today on accident and, looking at the views counter in YouTube, it appears that only a handful of others have run across it either.

In the presentation, Professor Lessig covers much of the same ground as he did in his previous speeches but deals heavily with the merging of the “read only” and “read/write” Web economies, stating that companies that successfully create this “hybrid” economy will be the most valuable on the Web.

He also, in the Q&A that followed, talked about copyright reforms that he’d like to see, including the reintroduction of some form of copyright formalities, such as copyright registration (something I would be opposed to), and modification to exactly what act “triggers” infringement since copying is effectively automatic when dealing with digital works.

The presentation is made all the more poignant by the fact that, a few months after this speech, he resigned as the chairman for Creative Commons and, not long thereafter, largely withdrew from copyrighting altogether.

This video is a must-watch for people interested in the role copyright will play on the Web and I am embedding it below.