Do you ever put your images into public domain?

[ivek32]

I was wondering do you guys ever put your images out into the public domains? I see that most people that have - let’s say - better quality images, almost never put them in PD. Why is that?

[astra_the_dragon]

Do you mean, a completely open license? I use CC-BY, and most iNatters use CC-BY-NC.

[chrisangell]

I’ve seen what you mean. I license all my iNat photos as CC0, but they are just low-to-medium quality cell phone pictures. People with really nice photos are likely to have invested a lot of time and money into their photography and are usually serious hobbyists or semi/professional photographers. They often opt for an all-rights-reserved license, and I assume they want to retain copyright so they would have to be compensated for any use of their work by others.

[cthawley]

I agree, people with nice photos have often invested time/money/effort. Even if they don’t want monetary compensation, they probably would still like recognition via attribution, so they might not go full PD in that case.

[fungee]

I recently switched my photos to PD. I do take nice photos, but lots of Fungi and they are my contributions to science. I don’t really care to monetize that. It’s like volunteering for me.

[fffffffff]

I don’t know the quality of my photos, but sometimes they are used by other people, I believe in no value of strict licences, they stop good people from using observations (and importing to GBIF) and never stop other people from stealing photos. Everything I have is CC BY-NC with hope to see people using links back to iNat.

[chrisangell]

@cthawley

Even if they don’t want monetary compensation, they probably would still like recognition via attribution

That’s true. And it also gives the photographer the right to decline use of their content in projects they don’t like, whereas CC-BY or CC0 means the photos can be used by anyone for any reason.

[kitty12]

I don’t put my images in public domain, typically, but if asked, I am generally pleased to have them used for educational purposes. It’s really easy to ask.

[susanhewitt]

All the images that I gave to Wikimedia are in the public domain, but as far as I know, only one of them is used on iNaturalist.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donax_fossor_2014.jpg

[fluffyinca]

My photos are licensed as CC-BY because while I have no objections to their use on Wikipedia, field guides, other websites etc, I would like recognition if someone wants to use them. I find it unlikely that anyone would, though, since although some of them are pretty good, they’re definitely not professional-grade.