The Flickr repository plugin is pretty neat, however I think a small change could be made that would help educators using Moodle all around the world. Many teachers are being made fearful to use images from the Internet due to possible copyright issues (I was surprised to hear how often this was a topic at the Moodlemoot UK earlier this week).

The Flickr API allows you to limit your search to only get results with a particular (set of) Creative Commons licenses. See:
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.search.html (the optional "license" argument) and here:
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.licenses.getInfo.html

I would propose to do the following:

1. Allow for searching for specific licenses. It would be too much to have a checkbox selection of each possible license. It is probably better to give three options: All images, CC-Licensed images, CC-licensed images which allow commercial use. I will try and use Balsamiq to create mock-up of what that could look like (see http://www.compfight.com for an example of how this could be done).
2. Find a way of using this information so that educators automatically comply with the CC licensing terms. This could be done in a couple of ways:

• Use GD to change the image and add a line at the bottom with the licensen information and the name of the Flickr user that provided the image.
• Append the username/license to the filename/filetitle when it is stored
• Use a title attribute when the file is inserted into the HTML editor and store the license/username in that attribute
• ... other options

What do others think?