So I am not a lawyer but this thread got me interested, and as far as I can tell, actually this is not the case. See this Stack Exchange answer for more:
No, the share-alike terms mean that if you create a derivative work of the CC-BY-SA licensed work, you can only publish it under the same license. But including a CC-BY-SA licensed work into a larger work doesn’t necessarily affect that larger work.
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I am writing a blog post and found a CC-BY-SA licensed image. Can I include it?
Yes, as long as I provide proper attribution and mention the license. I don’t have to license my blog post under CC-BY-SA.
So you can include a CC-BY-SA licensed work (i.e. image) in a larger work with a more restrictive license (i.e. a copyrighted book), I guess as long as the entire larger work itself is not a derivation of the work in question, and as long as you mention the license and the attribution when including it.
So for this case, given the above reading, the other field guide would be meeting all of the requirements. But I’m not sure the new Audubon field guides would, though, as they don’t specifically list if any of the photos they use are CC-BY-SA, and I’m sure at least some of them must be.
I see a lot of speculative discussion here but has anyone actually reached out to Audubon or the publisher about their photos and heard back from them?
That’s interesting, but then they certainly don’t seem to be fulfilling the requirements - they aren’t publishing the license info for those photos in the guide.
In looking at the CC guidelines, it seems like a field guide might be considered a Collective Work:
" “Collective Work” means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form, along with one or more other contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work (as defined below) for the purposes of this License"
That said, since the Work (ie photograph) needs to be unmodified, even cropping or color-balancing photos might remove a photo from being usable for this. Again, questions for lawyers!
I also found guidance on the citation issue here:
" Whenever you need to use a CC BY-SA licensed work, such as an image, it is important to include the following attribution line directly below the work as a caption. The only things that should be changed to the line are the title of the work in quotes (with accompanying link), the author’s name, and the version of the CC BY-SA terms, where applicable:
The above image, “Inspiration” by Patrick Verstappen, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. All other content herein is licensed and copyright under different terms and by different parties."
It really doesn’t sound like they are meeting the obligation for credit. I don’t see why a caption would be unreasonable for a book as a medium (especially since other field guides do it…)
So…going by some of the replies in the AMS group on fb where I copied a link to this thread with some of what has been going on…sounds like it isn’t the first time some of these groups have done this to people. Which…impo…the plot just thickens then, and my innate desire for justice screams they need to be stopped. I wish I had one of my images poached so I could go at them myself…but let me know how I can support if anyone wants help. Also someone said they checked their wildflower book, which the same thing is going on in that one so another to add to the list to be checked.
My understanding is that cropping and color-balancing can be prohibited by a CC-ND (no derivatives) license provision. If ND isn’t specified, cropping is permissible, but the cropped image would be a new work that inherits any BY, SA or NC provisions from the original.
The wildflower book is the only one of the series that the image credits are not listed in the Amazon preview, so if anyone could upload pictures of that credit page that would be amazing!
I don’t take that many good pictures of woodies; I suspect they may have scraped up one of my serpentine barrens scrub oak pictures from Wikimedia Commons, which would be CC-BY-SA and acceptable for use like this.
i thought it might be nice to have a page that shows you a summary of your observations’ photo licenses, in case you think you might have different photo licenses across your observations.
If they keep doing it, obviously the threat of damage to their brand/reputation and/or havintg to pay is not enough to ensure due diligence & respect for copyright, so I wonder what can be done. Then again, maybe I’m just in a pessimistic mood right now; don’t let my cynicism dissuade you!
that would be the target market, the customers who are paying for the book? A good place to encourage people to think twice about which field guide they pay for.
Audubon is a society, with members, who pay membership fees? Actively supporting scrapers.
Is it possible that someone though this counted as “non-commercial” use? Audubon itself is a non-profit, and there are much more blatantly commercial possible uses than inclusion in a book (e.g. using the photos in an advertisement or selling prints). I’m not saying that they’re correct to treat this as non-commercial use, but given that barely anyone even knows the difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism, I don’t have a ton of faith in the public’s ability to make the right calls regarding photo copyright. The publisher is absolutely responsible for this though.
CC-BY is definitely okay to use for any purpose, without seeking permission, as long as the photographer is credited. That’s the whole point of the license.
I think it’s somewhat unlikely that Wikimedia Commons includes massive numbers of photos unscrupulously taken from iNat. There are editors reviewing things there who are very sensitive and knowledgeable about copyright. I’m sure it happens occasionally and doesn’t get caught, but they know their reputation relies on it not being allowed to happen wholesale, at least not without being fixed. As someone else mentioned, a photo on Wikimedia Commons could easily have been uploaded separately there by its creator, in which case the publisher would be free to choose to abide by the license used there instead of the one used for it on iNat.
In my understanding, Wikimedia Commons’ strategy is basically to hammer the rules into anyone who’s thinking of uploading something, and then to aggressively remove anything (after a review period) whose copyright status is in question. Surely some things slip through the cracks, but overall it’s something they take very seriously and have staked their reputation and continued existence upon, and I don’t think illegal posting of images to Commons (that don’t soon get deleted) is the norm.
You’re almost right, but that’s not exactly how it works. The license specified for the photo on Wikimedia Commons is the owner’s license, unless a user has applied it fraudulently or mistakenly. Commons doesn’t (and can’t) apply different licenses on top of the original license. So unless something went wrong, having a different license on Wikimedia Commons means either that the photographer previously licensed it under that license somewhere else, or that they directly uploaded it to Commons themselves and gave it that license. In either of these cases, the publisher absolutely does have the right to choose to abide by the license specified on Commons instead of the license specified on iNat.
Now, if the license was specified incorrectly, Commons definitely wants to know about that, and will be in a hurry to fix or remove it as soon as they find out.
The whole point of a CC license is that they don’t have to contact you. If they were expected to contact you, there’s no purpose to having the license, because you can just give them permission (or not) yourself. If this is how you want it to work for your photos, then you need to make sure NOT to license them under CC.
Maybe you know this already, but in this case you need to make sure NOT to apply a CC license to any of your photos. The purpose of the CC license is to eliminate the requirement to contact you for permission. If you’ve been contacted for permission to use things that had a CC license on them, that’s because the person didn’t understand (or notice) the CC license, not because they were required to.
If you expect them to contact you for permission, that defeats the purpose of the license. You should NOT apply CC licenses to anything for which you want people to ask your permission before using. The CC license explicitly states that they don’t need your permission, and would be pointless otherwise, since that’s what “All rights reserved” means.
I don’t think SA is usually interpreted to mean that the same license is required for the entire work when only a photo used as a small part of it has an SA license. The point of SA is that you can’t, for example, make a modified version of the photo and then license that under a more restrictive license. A book is not an adaptation of a photo that appears in it.
Sure, if you’re ready to face down the publisher in a lawsuit where you have to spend thousands of dollars for a lawyer to hopefully, maybe convince the court that the publisher has zero claim to copyright on the book… Not to mention ripping off any photographers whose work the book paid to use.
This is absolutely not required for photos with CC licenses. The entire point of the CC license is to allow use without asking for your permission. Requiring permission is called “All rights reserved”. If you had a CC license on it and they contact you to ask for permission anyway, it’s because they didn’t see/understand/trust the CC license or because they wanted to use it in a specific way that’s not allowed by the specific CC license you chose.
