Personally, I have left a very polite comment on the channel pointing out the error and that these things should be properly credited, but I imagine it may require a bit of signal boosting to get enough attention for folks to notice it. Again, not encouraging brigading or a witch hunt here - don’t be rude to Clint, the dude is doing such good work of science communication - but some polite nudges to correctly credit people might be in order here.
And if you are a photographer, especially that deals in rare carnivorans, it may be worth it to see if any of your photographs have been used.
I would suggest contacting any users that you know are impacted directly, letting them know about the situation, and giving them some potential directions to take. They can leave a comment, message the channel, or send them a cease and desist letter (you can find form versions online). Since the channel in question is using the photos for profit (via monetized Youtube vids), they could even potentially lawyer up if they wanted to if the channel owners don’t stop using the photo without permission.
Its definitely something i may end up doing. I just don’t have the time right now to go digging through to figure out who all the photos belong to - still, hopefully I’ll find time in the next couple of days
Since Clint uses a lot of source material for his videos, he provides them in a word document linked in the video description. You’ll find the iNat users referenced in that document.
Right, but these arent crediting the actual photographers; i double checked the one photo i looked up earlier and the photographer was not listed for that one.
Edit: to emphasize, i really just want his editing team to notice this so they can fix the attributions. I love his channel and would hate for them to have to deal with an avoidable copyright dispute.
Just here to say I’m glad I read this thread. I checked out the video and subscribed to the channel. Clint’s enthusiasm and humor along with the excellent images and video combine to produce fascinating science education. I hope the attributions get sorted out.
Thank you for your post. Otherwise I would not likely have known about this channel.
I really do hope he (or an editor) sees your comment and changes things in the future! I’m a fan of the channel as well, but I cringe a little bit when I see the “(c) iNaturalist” credit message.
I actually don’t have much sympathy for monetized social media channels that do this (even if I like their content). They literally make their money from their content and people linking to them/spreading the word about them (effectively, citing/attributing them correctly). If someone takes their content or doesn’t attribute it appropriately, they lose money. So, out of anyone, they do understand the importance of correctly attributing work/sources online. And then choose not to do so? Or just include a perfunctory, but incorrect attribution? With multiple photos? (ie, not just a one off mistake)- not excusable in my opinion.
Yeah, I was reminded of that too. I think that example is more egregious, and I don’t think any action was ever taken, which to me seems really unfortunate.
For this video, I was curious of what the copyright license was for these observations, the first one I tracked down “Poiana richardsonii” was all rights reserved (and even has the author’s watermark in the photo), so this is a clear example of copyright infringement. I’m not going to look into the others, but I suspect they just take a photo from iNat that they like and don’t pay any attention to individual copyright licenses of each photo. Not cool…
this is especially egregious because iNAturalist makes it really simple to sort observations to show media that’s public domain or in the creative commons.
I strongly believe that crediting the original creator is essential when using their content but their consent to use the content, before using it, is more important. A channel’s popularity, measured by subscribers, likes, comments, or content quality, means little to me if the content is unoriginal and copied from other sources.
Unfortunately, numerous prominent channels create content by copying and combining works from other creators, often adding music and narration or posting it unchanged. I’ve personally experienced this with my content multiple times.
On YouTube, I receive notifications (not always) when someone uses my content in some vids uploaded on YouTube itself, allowing me to claim copyright infringement. However, reporting copyright violations can be exhausting, and I wonder how often one should raise complaints. Additionally, I spend most of the year in areas with limited network connectivity.
On other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and websites, I often remain unaware of content copying, making it impossible to report. As I don’t have personal accounts on these platforms, I only sometimes discover such copied content when searching Google.
To protect my work from any purposes which I personally may feel inappropriate, I’ve reserved my copyright everywhere, even for a very few photos or video screenshots uploaded in iNAT also. If someone requests permission to use my content for legitimate and good purposes before using it, I’m happy to agree without any credit. However, I see no reason to give credit after using content for purposes the creator may not approve of.
Continuously commenting on such channels would only boost their algorithms, so I choose not to engage.