If your observations say “All rights reserved” at the bottom right of the page, iNaturalist will not send the data to GBIF! Am I the only one who did not realize that the license/copyright statement at the bottom right of each observation does not apply to the photos? It applies to the data: the ti…

[image] GeolTel: I reckon it depends on the editor’s policies. I’m pondering on whether there’s a difference. Not on what is ethical or possible. Let me restate it like this. Do researchers, legally, have to treat the observational data of “specimens” posted on iNat differently than the exact…

I suspect that the answer to this question [image] pfau_tarleton: Do researchers, legally, have to treat the observational data of “specimens” posted on iNat differently than the exact same observational data of “specimens” in a museum collection? is, as in others with copyright surrounding …

[image] cthawley: Because of that, I think the more relevant question is probably whether it is ethical to post without acknowledgement or not - to which my personal opinion is that it is not ethical or advisable to publish data without acknowledgement if the data creater has stated their wish t…

[image] pfau_tarleton: Some CC licenses require permission before using–not just acknowledgement. So a researcher would need to go through the data to ensure that they’re not using any of those observational data, or, if they are, ask the persons for permission. Yes, they should. Though data …

[image] cthawley: My own guess is that there are probably lots of reasons, but that historical contingency is a big one. Collections were, in many cases, created as institutions and their associated practices/norms established before copyright was as much of a thing and certainly before CC licen…

The NCBI statement sounds pretty similar de facto to iNat’s position in my opinion. iNat allows submitters to claim a copyright to observations/media but does not assess validity or get involved with adjudicating copyright. But I think the big difference is that NCBI and NHCs are primarily scientif…

[image] pfau_tarleton: Some CC licenses require permission before using–not just acknowledgement I have not seen it stated anywhere that a user must seek permission to use a CC-licensed work. In fact, the whole point of the Creative Commons licenses is to give this permission in a standardize…

[image] cthawley: I also think that it makes a difference that many NHC collection specimens were created by employees of the collection. In this sense, as terms of their employment, they may not have any individual rights to those specimens (ie, they were paid to make them for the museum), so i…

[image] Loopy30: [image] pfau_tarleton: Some CC licenses require permission before using–not just acknowledgement I have not seen it stated anywhere that a user must seek permission to use a CC-licensed work. In fact, the whole point of the Creative Commons licenses is to give this permis…

Does copyright law allow you to restrict use of your observations—the data, this is, not the photos?

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Questions re. use of iNaturalist data in research: GBIF exports, licenses of observations General question	14	3343	March 26, 2021
Licensing problem for paper using iNat data General question	60	3129	January 17, 2023
Copyrighted records: is it possible to cite them in academic papers? How? General question	22	1071	October 25, 2024
All rights reserved observations General	28	3248	February 21, 2021
iNaturalist data on GBIF shows only CC BY-NC (excluding CC0 and CC BY) General	34	5732	March 9, 2020

Does copyright law allow you to restrict use of your observations—the data, this is, not the photos?

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