On the use of CC0 photos downloaded from the web

[zdanko]

I wasn’t referring to the linked example, just in general. By general, I mean the question that was posed by the original poster.

[cmcheatle]

@dianastuder

If the photos are scraped from Wikipedia, what do the scrapers use for date and location

If you legitimately want the real data, Wikipedia photos are actually stored on Wikimedia Commons along with their relevant metadata, so good chance you can find it there.

Thus for example the photo from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progomphus_obscurus

Is actually stored here
Wm commons

Or you can just fake it to make it eligible for your assignment etc.

[kiwifergus]

@zdanko

question that was posed by the original poster.

Lol, that’s funny! I was referring to the comment about the legacy observations being imported, but I didn’t reply directly to that point… and you DID reply directly to MY point, but about the original one! I can see why I got confused by your reply!

[zygy]

@cmcheatle

Legally they are not copyright violations. On the site their use falls under the copyright violation category as they do not represent the users experience of viewing the individual in the photo. Thus their use is not allowed.

It sounds like we need a new flag, like “Photo not by uploader” or something. Flagging these as a copyright violation would likely just confuse people since it doesn’t have anything to do with copyright.

[cmcheatle]

The descriptive text in the flag covers and directly lists both use cases, clear copyright violation and use without permission and attribution.

It still doesn’t address you don’t need permission to use a CC0 image. So if you attribute it why is it not allowed which needs to be formally documented

[thomas_et_guillaume]

Hello, I would like to add an element to this conversation: don’t forget that CC0 is not universally recognized, in some countries, like France, it is legally impossible to give up the authorship of a work, in this case of a photo. The most permissive license is CC-BY. If a French CC-BY photo is published in the USA under the CC0 license, it cannot be published again in France from the USA under the CC0 license.

[kiwifergus]

just to clarify, authorship is not surrendered under cc0, ownership of the intellectual property rights is… you are still the author, even if it is cc0! Or by “give up authorship” do you mean “use without attribution”?

[zygy]

You might be thinking of the original Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication, which has been deprecated and replaced by the CC0 waiver/license. The original dedication was mainly tailored to U.S. law, but CC0 is designed to be usable internationally, including in France and other countries with strong authorship and moral rights. As kiwifergus mentioned, CC0 doesn’t surrender authorship, it just waives any requirement for attribution by as much as is legally possible. You can read the full legal code at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode (or in French at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.fr).