CC0 observations could/should be also credited in taxon view

Feature Requests
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Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other:
website

URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1284037-Ischyrus-impressopunctatus

Description of need:
Describe the iNaturalist community need that your requested feature addresses. Include screenshots, URLs, and other details to help us all understand the issue.

The taxon view currently does not show attribution for CC0 images, but only that “there are no restrictions for reuse of the image”.

CC0_inat_credit
CC0_inat_credit548×603 344 KB

A good number of people that use CC0 (like me) use it in the sense of CC0(+BY) meaning that we won’t take legal action for reuse BUT credit is welcome whenever possible.

I quote @radrat’s profile page:

"All my photos on iNat are licensed under a CC0 / no rights reserved waiver, meaning you can reuse them in whatever way you’d like without needing to ask my permission. If you do reuse them, a heads up and a line of attribution are always welcome. "

Feature request details:

Add attribution for CC0 images in the same way that is done for other license kinds.

Extra context

In fact, there is also legal risk in some jurisdictions: In Brazil it is impossible to renounce the moral rights as an author, so indication of authorship is necessary. In practice, the chance of legal trouble is minimal but it would be generally recommended to just state the authorship.

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I see no reason at all not to list authorship on CC0 images, even if not required it is useful.

If you want to make sure people credit you it may be a good idea to use CC-BY, this license requires credit but does not apply any other restrictions in the way a license with SA or NC would

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Thanks for the support!

My rationale for using CC0 is that some applications (say, a mashup of photos in a book cover, an aggregator website, or a banner for an event) may have trouble attributing properly. I would not want to create any legal uncertainty there for reuse.

In any case, I agree that stating the author on iNat is useful (technically straightforward). Even if it is CC0, it is good to know the source of the picture.

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I like this suggestion, and perhaps it might be valuable to know that Creative Commons themselves uses CC0+attribution as a best practice to share climate data.

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Seems pretty straightforward, we just can’t say that the image is copyrighted by the user so I made an issue to display “[name or username] - no rights reserved (CC0)”.

2 Likes