Help..! I got the wrong copyright label for my pictures

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that you had to somehow install a specific copyright label on your pictures, when posting them. I would like to have people to make only non-commercial use of them, without altering them and, of course, I would like them to mention my name. How can I change this information for the pictures that I have already uploaded? If possible I don’t want to have to do all the work of uploading them, again… Thanks for your help!!

https://www.inaturalist.org/people/YOU/edit#content
Go to edit profile setting and change it there.

I checked a couple of your observations (this is your first) and it looks like they have CC-BY NC licenses (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which seem to do what you want. This is sort of the default iNat license. I would research the license options offered by iNat and decide which is best for you. Be aware that you also have a license for the observation data. If you set too restrictive of a license, your observations won’t be available on GBIF which restricts their use for scientific research. You could also consider whether you want your photos to be available for Wikimedia or not.

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Thank you for your help. I wasn’t aware of the license for the observation data and will try to find out more about that. I don’t know GBIF, yet, and will try to find out more about it, as well. Research: another subject to learn more about: I understood that if the license is very open, anyone may use the pictures (and data). Who exactly are the researchers that may want to work with them, and do they have a specific access to the pictures and data? (I am not concerned - just trying to find out how this all works!). Wikimedia commons: Is it possible to give researchers access to pictures and data without sharing them with Wikimedia & Co.? (no offence to Wikimedia, it’s just two different places that I may want to contribute to separately).

Current default licence allows automatic reposting to GBIF, doesn’t allow getting it to Wikimedia. Researchers don’t only use GBIF, they’re free to use iNat directly, but allowing GBIF is better than not.

Using the CC-BY NC license for your photos (the default license) essentially does this. Wikimedia requires that shared content doesn’t have a non-commercial restriction, so if you use CC-BY NC your images won’t be available for use on Wikimedia projects.

Out of curiosity, what is the reason you would not want someone to use your images in Wikipedia? Just interested to know more about these preferences.

I guess it has got to do with the nature of pictures showing not only birds, but also parts of places, where they live. I am interested in birds that live in roofs etc. of houses and may hesitate to publish in Wikimedia c. pictures of birds and “their houses” together with metadata about the more or less exact location of where these places are. (I’m not sure if I would like to have a picture of my - let’s say livingroom-window or balcony etc. in Wikimedia c.)

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Are you taking pictures of your own balcony? If not how would a random picture of someone else’s balcony be a privacy issue? It reveals nothing about who lives there unless they be can seen in the photo. Even if you exclude Google street view there are millions if not billions of geo-referenced photos of buildings online. Even if the shots do not have coordinates embedded it is relatively easy to track down the location of shots with relatively wide views.

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If you want your license to prohibit people from altering your photos, make sure to choose one of the “ND” (no derivatives) licenses. It sounds like CC BY-NC-ND will do everything you want.

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