I will say, almost everything I looked up in the tree guide that I could find the sourcing for seemed legit, so this really might be nothing.
That said, I feel like they should have at least contacted people? You would think individuals would like to know if they have photos in published works, even if that’s someone that they are generally okay with.
Or absolute worst case - they knew exactly what they were doing and it was somehow legal and we need to figure out how they figured out to skirt laws so we can stop it from occurring again.
Having been stolen from before (not in this case, so far) yes it does take time & money to fight which is why no one ever can stand up to companies…but even still, I am really hoping everyone affected here will band together and demand payment.
That’s a really good idea.
Yeah i dont get on fb much but this is also good idea and I think i’ll do that too. There are a lot of big names in mycology on that list and i’m recognising regionally known names as well.
At the very least, they might be happy to see that they’re published, if it harmless XD
Hopefully that’s the case.
I agree, although unless contacting is required for use (compensation, etc) I don’t think it’s required. It’s especially weird paired with no credit on each photo, in the back is a list of users/names which basically just says “one or maybe more of this user’s photos was used in this book… somewhere”. I had always hoped when a photo of mine was used there would be a way of knowing I took that picture (the license I use is attribution: non-commercial).
I would think it would be hard to track down all affected parties, I have no idea how it would be handled. Depending on the scope of the issue the question could be raised on whether it’s ethical or not to even continue selling the books. Based on recent comments it sounds like the issue isn’t as widespread as first thought, but hard to say.
The lack of individual photo attribution is what seems so sketch to me. It just seems wildly unprofessional.
Heres the credits from a different field guide that i own - look how detailed this is
EDIT: I just double checked my other books/field guides, because I am nothing if not massively pedantic, and every other one either has fully detailed credits or uses mainly photography by the author (with credits where necessary)
Not particularly important to the discussion, but from quickly glancing at your recent observations most seem to have all rights reserved-- don’t know if you’re intending for them to be licensed that way.
I agree. I let places use my images when I know they are a nonprofit and they ask and i know the folk (caving world is small…) and like the most recent project i supported - a big table top photo book - they do credits with little thumbnails of the image at the end! It’s really well done - they did it that way so there isn’t text over or distracting from the huge photo pages and there is just a spot to photographer-spotlight instead. You can see pages on their indigogo (can’t even print it without support, it’s a fundraiser thing). It basically looks like this:
It also looks like there are some iNat accounts listed in the photo credits for the “National Audubon Society Trees of North America.” If you go to https://www.amazon.com/National-Audubon-Society-Trees-America/dp/0525655719/ref=d_bmx_dp_ia1bxl1o_sccl_2_1/132-1916623-5515263?pd_rd_w=8EABx&content-id=amzn1.sym.368b1da3-bd5e-471c-a642-a329f8f53bef&pf_rd_p=368b1da3-bd5e-471c-a642-a329f8f53bef&pf_rd_r=MVESFCDGJYHBVQ5A3PQ7&pd_rd_wg=usYL1&pd_rd_r=5accdb5c-2160-4785-9a8d-3b177f3e71f4&pd_rd_i=0525655719&psc=1 and do the “Look Inside,” you can scroll down to the photography credits. Just skimming through there, I found a few iNat names.
I’m disappointed by Knopf / Audubon. Even images I have licensed for public use, most professionals contact me ask permission or at least give a heads up that they intend on using them. Since I’m not sure which images of mine they used I can’t determine what license I had on them. I know @richtehan posted someplace that he was also caught off guard to see his images in the book.
Thanks, I looked at my settings and the default photo and sound copyrights were set to attribution: non-commercial so those could be used, but the observations themselves had all rights reserved. I’m not sure what the implications are there but I changed the observation setting to match the others as well.
this is vastly better attribution, but interestingly even in this case, in the pages i can see, they note that the sourced images from Wikimedia and Mushroom Observer are licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, which i believe means that any works that build upon these should also be licensed SA… but the authors reserve all rights in the bottom photo.
(if the book was licensed SA, then theoretically anyone could sell their own copies or derivatives of it.)
You are correct that I only have a single listing on Mushroom Observer, and it is Pleurotus citrinopileatus.
Also true: I have the same username (kgivens) at both MO and iNat.
Have we in fact established that photos have been lifted from MO as well as iNat? If so, then I suppose its possible that only one of my pictures was exploited, and it might have come from MO rather than iNat. However, I have not yet combed through the entire Audubon field guide to see if additional species that I posted on iNat were also scraped/scavenged by Audubon/Fieldstone/Knopf.
FWIW, all of my photo listings at iNat were done with their default license setting, which is CC BY NC.
but how is it licensed at Mushroom Observer?
Yes, this is correct as far as I am aware. The resulting product would have to be SA as well - so you could print and distribute (and even sell) copies of the book and they couldn’t enforce their copyright as I understand it. If they tried to enforce their claim to all rights reserved, they might fail.
I also find the lack of individual attribution disturbing and would guess that this doesn’t meet the requirements of the CC license - though again, they’d need to be taken to court to enforce it. They definitely aren’t required to contact the licenser to use images (though it’s obviously courteous to do so). The non-specific attribution also makes it really difficult to determine which images are from which users and actually assess whether the licensing is ok or not!
It does look like there aren’t any clear cut cases of inappropriate use of an image at this point though - it is possible that all of the images used were CC-BY (or less restrictively licensed) meaning that this could just be poor form and not an actual break of license (except maybe with the attribution bit). I’d be really interested to see if there are any specific photos that the photographer knows were used in violation of their license.
i think the most effective punishment would be something along these lines. in a case of a guide that is clearly built off of lots of SA images, then someone should just digitize a copy of the book and distribute it for free.
Yes, there are several usernames listed in the credits that are used (virtually) exclusively on Mushroom Observer, and those are all similarly listed in the way MO displays usernames.
This; I know for sure there’s a few that use different usernames here and on MO, and its crediting their MO usernames
EDIT: Honestly, unless someone comes out and confirms one of their photos as being used improperly, my personal conclusion is that its just a really messy attribution section and at worst the publishers might need to be called out for that
A legitimate publisher will reach out and ask if they can use your photo and also ask how you want your photo credit to appear. Many require you to sign a release document, allowing them to use the photo. At least that’s what I’ve seen. The only time I’ve been surprised (i.e., not informed in advance) by use of my photo was on a website, brochure, or some other media that wasn’t for sale.
Thanks a lot! The “cbird” had me worried for a bit, but I don’t think they’d get it wrong that bad if they meant me… also I hardly have any mushroom observations and the ones I have aren’t great. If there is a new bird guide yet, I would want to check that (though I still doubt I’d be in it, thankfully).
Edit: I thought all my observations were all rights reserved… on checking now, I don’t think they were so that’s now changed but wouldn’t apply backward…? I doubt they would have used any of mine though. 
