It looks like this has been brought up a few times before without any clear conclusion, and I’m just wondering if there has been any progress. I’ve noticed that sometimes people upload a screenshot from an identification app, like Merlin or Seek.
I understand that these screenshots do not count as evidence, so if that’s all that is included, it should marked “no” under “Evidence of organism”. I also understand that these screenshots confuse the computer and we don’t want them for that reason.
It seems to me that, in cases where there is other evidence (photos or audio), flagging the screenshots as copyright infringement is the only way to get rid of them, other than getting the person who originally posted them to remove them. (If there is some other way, what is it?)
So, are these screenshots copyright infringement, or not? Perhaps we can’t get a definite answer for Merlin, but what about Seek?
I haven’t seen this before, so I may be misinterpreting, but if the screenshot doesn’t include their photo of the organism, could you use the DQA “photos not all related to one organism” clickbox? That would mark the observation casual without requiring that it be hidden like is done with copyright violations. I’m not sure if that would be considered proper use of the DQA assessment, but it seems reasonable to me if the observation includes media that aren’t the organism.
Is this referring to a screenshot that includes their photo, or a screenshot that just shows the ID page from the app without their own media included? Because if their original photo is part of the screenshot, I certainly wouldn’t downvote “evidence or organism” or “evidence related to single subject” (that’s for when there are multiple photos that don’t show the same target organism.) If the screenshot includes their photo and other “stuff” from an app, that’s just a copyright issue, so I’d mark it as such and add a comment asking them to try uploading just their photo without the other “stuff” around it. If they simply upload a screenshot of someone else’s material without any of their own photo included, then I’d both mark for copyright and downvote “evidence of organism”, since they didn’t include any original evidence.
Well I’m trying to do this without drawing attention to a particular person, so it is a little tough to give an example. In the case I have in mind, it looks like it was done intentionally, by someone who knows how to attach other photos, and I really don’t want to embarrass them because they obviously didn’t mean to do anything sketchy. (I left them a comment but have not heard back yet.)
The screenshot is of a page in Seek which includes their own photo and some text from Seek (in this case the “you observed a new species!” page). So there is evidence of the organism and it is all evidence of the same organism (there are other photos). It’s just a question of whether it is improper to include the whole page from Seek surrounding the image. Since iNaturalist is responsible for Seek, it seems to me that it ought to be possible to determine if this is an okay use of Seek.
I don’t think this can possibly be something we would want to encourage, because it is liable to confuse the computer vision, but if it is not actually improper, then I will happily just ignore it.
As long as their own photo is in the screenshot, I’d just ignore it. The CV can learn to ID stuff with “noise” so if users do this frequently, it will learn to ignore the background Seek screen.
In the case I have in mind, it looks like it was done intentionally, by someone who knows how to attach other photos, and I really don’t want to embarrass them because they obviously didn’t mean to do anything sketchy. (I left them a comment but have not heard back yet.)