While there are certainly people that have made an affirmative decision to choose a particular license, I believe the vast bulk of iNat contributors choose to go with the default. I’m all for allowing people to retain the control they choose over the content they provide, but I do think the defaults should be set to reflect the level of sharing that an average science-minded user might expect.
There was a long discussion here about trying to shift the default license to be CC-BY rather than CC-BY-NC. It seemed there was good support for this, but also a minority who felt that the possibility of commercial use would surprise some new users.
I would prefer to see a more guided process to selecting a license. For an example, new users could be asked this:
Which type of sharing do you want to allow for your photos by default?
- Attribution Required only (CC-BY). This would allow your photos to be used on Wikimedia Commons projects such as Wikipedia AND by researchers via the GBIF data exchange.
- Attribution Required with Non-Commercial restriction (CC-BY-NC). This would allow your photos to be used by researchers via the GBIF data exchange, but NOT on Wikimedia Commons projects such as Wikipedia.
- Attribution Required with ShareAlike restriction (CC-BY-SA). This would allow your photos to be used on Wikimedia Commons projects such as Wikipedia, but NOT by researchers via the GBIF data exchange.
- All Rights Reserved. You retain all rights to your photos. NO ONE can reuse the copies you upload to iNaturalist.
- A different license. Click here to see less common license options