I know that these are not exported to GBIF, and that obviously the images cannot be used or republished. My question is about using observations within iNaturalist as data points. Presumably, the metadata in these observations also cannot be used as data points? And do they also have to be excluded from the count of data points? That is, if I found, say 25 observations that showed the trait of interest, but 2 of them were all rights reserved, would I have to say in my research report that I found 23 observations with the trait of interest? If so, how would this affect statistics if, for instance, I was looking at the percentage of observations with the trait of interest out of all observations – and I don’t have the time to open every observation of the taxon to check its license?
The reason this matters is because some taxa are often disputed and many observations, while useful at the genus level, are not at Research Grade because they are neither identified to the species level nor marked “as good as can be”
Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.
If your research report is simply saying that species were observed at a particular time and location, the person who made those observations have no basis on which to claim they have that information copyrighted in the US. If they wrote an essay about their observation in the notes or comments and you copied that into your report, that could be a problem.
There are a fair amount of existing discussions/threads on the forum that address what in an observation (apart from the photos/sounds) may or may not be copyrightable that will have some bearing on this and be useful.
I think I get it now. It’s like any other source used in research: the paper or book chapter is probably copyright, but I can cite it as long as I don’t plagiarize it.