Concern About Internet-Sourced Images on iNaturalist

(Edited to add a specific first example)

Just to clarify some of the feedback I gave you, sometimes I’ve seen you (and others, including myself) flag an image as copyright infringement when I don’t think it’s necessarily infringing on someone’s copyright. I’m not a lawyer, but here are two different situations:

Sometimes people will post a photo that includes an image that someone else took or made and they’ll post it to iNaturalist. Let’s say I posted this photo to iNat and IDed it as a kingfisher:

(Hong Kong Wetland Park has the best bathroom interpretive signs ever, btw)

I’m not claiming that the bird image that’s on the sign was created by me. I just took a photo of a sign that happened to include an image made by someone and I think we can just ID that observation as Homo sapiens and move on. I don’t think the copyright infringement flag is suited for that situation because my photograph of the sign is what’s relevant to the attributon. That being said, I’ve certainly used it for these situations in the past.

What I think the copyright infringement flag is best used for is when someone is passing off another person’s image/sound as their own. Usually that happens when someone finds a photo online and uploads it directly to iNat. For example, if someone took my photo from Flickr and posted it as their own:

For that situation, the image should be flagged as copyright infringement. But, happy to be corrected by someone with real legal knowledge.