But while the approach to integration is new, the big idea behind the service is still very much the same. iCopyright Article Tools + Syndication places various badges on your site that invites people to license content through it.

You, through your Conductor control panel can set the services offered, the prices charged for those services and even set many of them to be free.

But is it something you should add to your site? The answer truly depends on what you’re looking for in your syndication tools.

What is iCopyright Article Tools Plugin?

To be clear, iCopyright Article Tools is not intended as a replacement for other sharing services, such as those that encourage posting to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Not only does iCopyright not provide those services, but they published a report in 2009 that said such tools may increase infringement.

Instead, iCopyright’s tools are aimed exclusively, or almost exclusively, at those who want to encourage paid licensing of their content.

To do this, the plugin first has you sign up for an iCopyright Conductor account, which will require you to fill out a very long form with a great deal of information about you, your site and your work. Once you’ve done that and gotten your publication ID, you should be able to sign in and start adding the plugin’s toolbars to your site.

On that front, iCopyright’s plugin has two different toolbars you can add to your post, either a horizontal or vertical toolbar. Here’s the horizontal one:

[icopyright horizontal toolbar]

The service also adds and interactive copyright notice, such as this one:

[interactive copyright notice]

(Note: All of these toolbars are functioning so you can play with them, however, bear in mind that this article, as with the rest of this site, is licensed under a Creative Commons License and NOT under these terms.)

Clicking on the toolbar will open up a popup window that lets you license the content in a variety of ways including sending via email, printouts (including both by you and created by iCopyright), reposting on other sites, and other publication services.

In each case, iCopyright handles the calculation of the price (if any), the transaction and the generation of the license for the creator. In exchange, iCopyright takes a cut of the revenue earned from the transaction, an amount that varies based on what rights are being secured.

The end result, theoretically, is that users who want to license can do so easily through iCopyright, which in turn makes the process as simple as possible for the buyer an makes it hands-free for you as the creator.

But as great as that sounds, it doesn’t mean that iCopyright Article Tools plugin is right for you or for your site.

Are iCopyright’s Article Tools Right For You?

The beautiful thing about iCopyright’s Article Tools is that they enable any content creator, big or small, to get involved in licensing their content. Most such clearance agencies either only or primarily represent larger copyright holders, such as newspapers, magazines, etc. and don’t do much for smaller players like bloggers.

iCopyright not only lets such creators get into the game, but also gives them very granular control over prices. You can determine how much you want to charge for virtually every way you can license your work, including setting tiered pricing, as well as disabling/enabling various licensing systems.

That being said, that granular control comes at a price. Though installing the plugin is simple, setting it up, including signing up for your account and setting your pricing is going to take a significant amount of time and it comes with a pretty steep learning curve too.

The process, unfortunately, isn’t too much better if you already have a “Creators” account with iCopyright as you will have to have iCopyright convert your account over for it to work properly.

What this means is that iCopyright only practical for those who are serious about turning content licensing into a revenue source and not for people who just want to make it easy to let others email their articles (there are many other plugins/services for that).

It’s also worth noting that the plugin and its toolbars are a bit rough around some of the edges. In testing the plugin, I ran into a series of bugs, mostly revolving around the use of my old Creators account.

Fortunately, most of those bugs were resolved in the 1.3 update (though old accounts still need to be converted). There are also minor issues such as my theme not liking the plugin, causing it to display the toolbars on the front page as well as the single posts.

Most importantly though, I don’t think many bloggers are going to see any revenue from licensing their content in this manner. There simply doesn’t seem to be enough interest in this kind of paid licensing of blogger and smaller creator content as most of the sharing of such content is done via social networking and via tools that don’t require a license at all.

Even though iCopyright has licensed nearly 3 million articles this year, most of that is, almost certainly, from the company’s larger partners.

That being said, iCopyright may find an audience with mid-sized publishers with these tools. Sites that perhaps are too small to be considered a “big fish” but still large enough and in a good niche to see at least some licensing.

Bottom Line

Someone who is casually interested in licensing probably will find these tools to be overwhelming in terms of complexity and underwhelming in terms of rewards. The true niche for this product is slightly upfield, with mid-sized publishers who can expect to earn some revenue, but not enough to warrant creating an in-house licensing system.

But even with that there are still some rough edges that need to be polished and definitely some room to improve the simplicity of the entire process on the creator side (as opposed to the purchaser side, which is very straightforward).

It’s also worth noting that iCopyright Article Tools are incompatible with Creative Commons Licenses, unless you use the tools to sell commercial rights not granted in the CC license.

In the end, if you’re in the niche that’s best served by these tools, you should definitely give them a try. But if you’re not, you’ll probably want to take a pass and find other ways to benefit from sharing, such as focusing more on social media.

Disclosure: I have done paid consulting for iCopyright in the past.

That being said, watermarking your images can be a tremendous pain, especially if you have a large volume of images or are constantly creating new ones. The best solution to this has been to integrate watermarking into your workflow and photographers have been doing that for years with Photoshop and other editing programs. Likewise, several photo sharing sites have also integrated watermarking into their services, including deviantART, making it virtually hands free.

But what about bloggers? To that end sverde1 has created a WordPress entitled “Watermaks Reloaded” that aims to add watermarking to your blogging workflow. But how well does it work and is it worth the energy? I decided to install it and find out.

Testing Watermark Reloaded

The basics of Watermark Reloaded is fairly simple. Once you install the plugin, which can be easily installed via the WordPress backend since it is in the official directory, you simply configure the options for the plugin and go.

Among the options you can set which image sizes get the watermark, where it appears on the image (including the margin) and the text/formatting of the watermark.

All in all, it takes a few seconds to set up and run but, once your options are configured, all the images up upload to your blog automatically have your watermark attached to it.

To that end, you can see a sample of a watermarked image above as all the images that I’ve embedded in this post used the plugin.

But while there is no doubt that the plugin is easy to install and set up, the question is whether its worthwhile and that one is a bit more difficult to answer.

Is Watermark Reloaded Worthwhile?

To be clear, Watermark Reloaded does everything it says it will do, but the options are minimalist and the plugin may not be right for many WordPress users.

For one, there’s no way to turn the plugin off on specific images (something that’s on the “to do list” for the plugin). This means if your site uses a mix of original and stock images, you probably want to pass as you don’t want to watermark images you don’t own.

Second, the plugin doesn’t do any “sanity checking” to make sure that the watermark will fit on the image, producing watermarks like the one to the right, where the mark is too big for the image (also on the “to do list”).

Finally, the watermark itself is fairly inflexible. Users only get to choose the text, the font, the size and the color of the mark. There is no ability to use a logo, set a transparency or set up the watermark to change based on the image (IE: White watermark on black background and vice versa)

Still, if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to do a simple watermark on all of your WordPress images, this may be the WordPress plugin for you.

Bottom Line

Personally, I’ll be uninstalling this plugin once this review is done. While it hasn’t caused any problems I don’t have any use for watermarking every image on PT, especially since so many are stock images.

That being said, there are some photobloggers and artists out there that might find this plugin very useful and, for those, I definitely want to recommend it. Just bear in mind that it is much more limited than other watermarking tools, though it will save time and help guarantee nothing goes online without a mark.

However, I have to wonder if it makes more sense to integrate watermarking into the blogging workflow or the photography workflow. I would think for most it should be the latter but for some, this approach may well make sense.

Previously on this site I’ve talked about using PhotoDropper to make importing and attribution of Creative Commons-licensed Flickr images easier.

However, yesterday on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow requested a bookmarklet to create attribution lines for CC-licensed images. Earlier today, a user came through for him by making a simple “drag and drop” bookmarklet that you can add to your browser toolbar.

To use the bookmark, you simple navigate to the Flickr image you want to use (making sure it is CC-licensed) and then click the bookmarklet. You’ll be greeted with a popup that tells you to copy the HTML code that you then paste into your site/post below the image.

The only wrinkle in the bookmarklet is that it doesn’t 100% complete the license. It does not link to the actual CC license, though it does mention its name. This is hair-splitting but, considering it would be an easy fix I would still like it to be done (Note: I left a comment on the BoingBoing post about this but it hasn’t been put up yet).

Still, it is a great idea, especially for those who don’t use WordPress or would rather download and host the images themselves and not hotlinking off of Flickr’s servers (as PhotoDropper does). Other than that, I still largely prefer PhotoDropper as it formats the text better and uses the CC logo, making it a bit shorter of an attribution line.

For those who are interested in an even easier way, there is also a Flickr CC Attribution Helper script for Greasemonkey that places a textbox with the attribution code on every page. Though it can only be used with Firefox and with the Greasemonkey extension installed, for those using that system it may make a lot of sense.

However, this script neither mentions which CC license the work is being used under nor does it link to the license, just to the image and the user profile.

Still, either of these scripts will be better than most of the CC attribution that takes place, They both do a more complete job than most do on their own and I’m certainly almost anyone who licenses content under CC would be happy with the attribution as it does keep with the spirit of the license, if not the letter.

All in all, these are great ideas for citing Creative Commons works.

But using Creative Commons is not a simple task. You have to first find the work you want to use, resize it so that it fits in your blog and then provide proper attribution, something that is rarely done correctly.

By the time all of this is done, many prefer to use the stock.xchng or similar sites to avoid these issues. However, a new WordPress plugin, Photo Dropper, seeks to make life easier for those wanting to use Creative Commons images. The plugin automates the entire process of using a CC-licensed image, including the scaling and attribution.

The process is so simple that it is even easier than using WordPress’ built-in media uploader and takes only a few seconds to complete. It could easily be the best thing to happen to image-hungry bloggers and to CC-loving artists in a very long time.

How it Works

The first step is using Photo Dropper is to install the WordPress plugin. This is a process that every WordPress user should be familiar with, save those using a free WordPress.com account, but directions are also provided on the Photo Dropper site if needed.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, you first have to edit the options for the plugin. The options themselves are very straightforward, consisting of only five things, setting the number of images displayed, selecting whether to only search for ones available for commercial use, sorting by “most interesting” and adding HTML code before and after the insert.

Once you’ve set your options, the interface appears on your write screen below your editor.

As shown above, it allows you to search for a keyword you are interested in, such as “pirate” in this case.You hit search and it pulls up a thumbnail gallery of applicable images.

Below each image is a series of options. The first pops the image out full size in a new window, making it easier to view. The other letters represent “small”, “medium” and “large” and generate the code to insert the image into your post.

For example, if you click “Medium” on one of the images, you get a new image in your post that looks like this:

photo credit: Brittany G

As you can see, the image is sized correctly for the blog and contains the attribution directly below the image, rather than at the footer of the post. The attribution is formatted well and is compliant with both Flickr and Creative Commons requirements.

All totaled, Photo Dropper makes it possible, with just two clicks of the mouse, to put in legal free images into any of your blog posts or pages. All by working with the well-documented Flickr API.

Why this is Great

The beauty behind this service goes well beyond just bloggers obtaining free images for their site. Rather, this also helps content creators, specifically photographers that post their work on Flickr and license it under a Creative Commons License.

As I’ve talked about before, one of the biggest issues with Creative Commons is that the license is very rarely followed to the letter. This plugin, however, ensures that the photo is attributed correctly and in the proper manner, including links back to the creator and the image itself, all of which are search-engine friendly.

By making it easy for bloggers to do not just the right thing, but also the legal one, the plugin encourages the behavior and will cause more bloggers to follow the letter of the license. This, in turn, should result in more bloggers taking advantage of CC-licensed images and in more links and recognition for CC artists.

Limitations

Though the plugin, overall, is a great tool, it has its share of limitations as well.

1. Only Supports Flickr: Though Flickr is a great repository of CC-licensed artwork, it is not the only one on the Web. Though Flickr was a great choice to start with, it would be nice to see other sites added in the future.
2. Limited Control: Outside of adding HTML before and after the image, you have very little control over how it displays. This can make it difficult to fit into your site without some effort.
3. Difficult Searching: The search feature is great if you find what you’re looking for almost immediately. Otherwise, going through a large number of images can be a pain. You practically are forced to change the number of thumbnails before use and more advanced search tools would make a big difference.
4. WordPress-Only: Currently Photo Dropper exists only as a WordPress plugin, meaning those that use other platforms, or even WordPress.com, are not able to take advantage of it. Plugins for other platforms as well as a Web-based version that generates the code for easy copy/paste for those who can’t use plugins would also be a huge help.
5. Slowness: This is an issue with Flickr, not Photo Dropper, but sometimes search can be very sluggish. The Flickr API is not very quick and, when combined with the searching issues, can make for a long search time.

However, the negative aspects, for the most part, are significantly outweighed by the positive aspects. Since the plugin is free, it makes sense to install it and see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, simply deactivate the plugin and move on; if it does, you may have easy access to a large number of images that are free for you to license.

Conclusions

I try to cover legal alternatives because the more that are available and the easier they are to use, the fewer excuses that plagiarists and scrapers have. Every legal alternative is another weapon against content theft and a way for people to support and help content creators.

Personally, I am very excited about this service. Though it has flaws, it solves at least two of the major problems with Creative Commons, namely the issues with providing proper attribution and formatting, and it makes great headway into solving the issue of finding good work to use.

Most likely, if you watch this site, you’ll see a couple of Photo Dropper images in various articles as time goes on. Though I favor my own screenshots to illustrate the articles I write, in cases where that is not appropriate, I may use Photo Dropper to add images in as fitting.

All in all, Photo Dropper is a great tool that I look forward to using as needed. It may not make regular appearances on the site, but I do have a feeling you will see it again…