*Where* to give credit for Creative Commons licensed work?

Question

These articles explains how to give credit for CC-licensed work, but I can't information on where to give credit.

Suppose I want to use an icon on my commercial website -- I can't exactly credit the author next to every 16x16 icon I use throughout the site. Is it fair/legal to have a sort of licenses/credit page linked in the footer of my page, that simply lists out every licensed thing that I use?

If I do, do I need to render the icon on that page too so that people know immediately know to what I am referring, or can I just link back to the source pages?

Answer 1

You should be reasonable when giving credits properly, so the copyright notice should be visible and easy to find, preferably in the same page that the copyrighted resource was used (but you can also link to a page that contains all the required information), in a fashion that is both visible and unambigous to humans and computers.

You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(a)(1) in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share the Licensed Material. (From the CC 4.0 legal code)

To achieve this goal you should use RDFa for the metadata and clearly state that the work is licensed, see Marking Works Technical.
For instance there's an icon in your main page that you are displaying using

<img src="bar.jpg">

When adding the licence information in your footer/credits page you should put some qualifiers in it e.g.

Icon licensed under <a about="/bar.jpg" rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LICENSE_INFORMATION">a Creative Commons License</a>

(This example is adapted from the CC wiki, for more examples go to the RDFa Primer)

Answer 2

Is it fair/legal to have a sort of licenses/credit page linked in the footer of my page, that simply lists out every licensed thing that I use?

Yes, I think so. It is very common for a copyright notice to be included at the bottom of every page of a given site. If the page contains small icons that you don't own the copyright to, this is the best place to note it. If there are many such, with many distinct attributions, then you can indicate as much, and provide a link to the details, as you suggest.

By the way, it's better to err on the side of attribution that is too visible than attribution that is not visible enough. When you're adding a copyright notice, it may seem glaringly unsubtle to you (because you're focusing on it), so you might feel tempted to make it ridiculously tiny and/or ridiculously faint. Resist that temptation. It's OK (and common) for it to be somewhat smaller and optionally fainter than the regular page font, but it should still be easy to read. Since it's in the footer, and it's very obvious what it is, people who aren't interested in it will ignore it (without even noticing that they're ignoring it).

If I do, do I need to render the icon on that page too so that people know immediately know to what I am referring, or can I just link back to the source pages?

If the icon has a title, then technically that's all that's needed to identify it (and you have to provide the title anyway as part of the attribution requirement); but rendering the icon itself sounds like a good idea, IMHO.