

Flickr now offers Public Domain and CC0 designations - danso
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2015/03/30/flickr-now-offers-public-domain-and-cc0-designations/

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Asparagirl
Props to Flickr for the change, and a shout out to the woman who brought the
issue to their attention, librarian Jessamyn West:
[https://medium.com/message/why-spacex-s-photos-are-now-
publi...](https://medium.com/message/why-spacex-s-photos-are-now-public-
domain-178f50a62218)

Jessamyn _also_ invented the warrant canary. She is rad.

~~~
jessamyn
Just publicized, did not invent! But thank you very much.

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mosburger
It seems like there've been a crop of small sites trying to build in a "public
domain stock photography" niche
([http://www.pexels.com/](http://www.pexels.com/),
[https://stocksnap.io/](https://stocksnap.io/), and
[https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/) to name a few). I wonder if
this will kill them off. :-/

Right now
[http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons](http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons)
(where I usually head to look for creative commons photos) lists zero public
domain images.

~~~
codingdog
Marc from StockSnap.io here! We honestly couldn't be happier that Flickr is
doing this and we'll be sure to add their CC0 photos to our repository.

~~~
mosburger
I have no idea why it didn't even occur to me that the sharing went both ways
- totally makes sense now. :)

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Octplane
Maybe some day, Flickr will actually start to care about CC a bit and log
licence changes from CC licences to other licence. Current workflow allows
photographers to revoke these CC licences after a while and this effectively
prevents many people from using CC pictures because nobody wants to be sent to
trial because he's used CC pictures with correct attributions that have
mutated to All Rights Reserved suddenly.

This sucks. (ramblings of an old fotopedian)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Hit the Flickr URL with Archive.org, which should capture both the image,
date+time, and the CC license present at time of archive. The Wayback Machhine
has been used in court before, so precedent does exist.

javascript:void(open('//web.archive.org/save/'+encodeURI(document.location)))

~~~
JacobAldridge
When building www.everydaydreamholiday.com we cached and screenshot all the
external images used (never build a scale solution because we never, um,
scaled).

Interestingly, we let the photographers know as well, for a variety of reasons
including the possibility they had set CC unintentionally. Most were grateful
- we woke up one morning to an irate barrage from one photographer who had
uploaded his image to Wikipedia without appreciating what that meant. We just
changed the photo we used, and sent him a link to the Public Domain Photo on
Wikipedia and a dozen other sites he might want to contact who were also using
it. He apologised immediately, which was neat.

Given the amazing images available under CC (even for commercial use), it
frustrates me when websites try to steal protected images and get away with
it. If I can find a CC Commercial Use image of marshmallows toasting over lava
in Guatemala [1], you can find a fully legal image of a sunset.

[1] [http://everydaydreamholiday.com/2013/01/24/pacaya-volcano-
an...](http://everydaydreamholiday.com/2013/01/24/pacaya-volcano-antigua-
guatemala-toasting-chocolate-marshmallows-over-lava/)

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dwightgunning
I've been wondering how Aviate identify and curate their lovely background
images.

They all come from Flickr... but not sure what groups they'd be following, or
search parameters they'd be using to narrow it down.

Prior to this change... I presume they would be restricted to CC-attribution?

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sgnelson
Only about 10 years too late?

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rasz_pl
Is it because Elon Musk made all SpaceX media Public Domain?

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150322/07190730399/elon-...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150322/07190730399/elon-
musk-says-spacex-photos-are-now-fully-public-domain.shtml)

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adrusi
I don't like it. There might be appropriate circumstances for public domain
designations, but I think it seems much more attractive to laypeople than it
should. Most people should probably stick to licensing their artistic work
with something resembling one of the creative commons licenses.

It's always been possible to designate an image to the public domain on
flickr, by pasting a designation into the description, but this gave it a
level of overhead that I think discouraged people who hadn't thought about it
much to avoid it.

Edit: This is getting downvotes, which I'm not sure I understand, but I'll
assume it's because I didn't explain the problems with public domain
designations. If there are other reasons, I'd appreciate a comment explaining
them.

IANAL, but as I understand, there's some debate over whether works _can_ be
committed to the public domain at all. This makes some individuals, and a lot
of big companies, hesitant to make use of anything with a public domain
designation. Most people who try to commit something to the public domain
rather than picking a popular non-restrictive license do so in effort to
remove all obstacles to people using it, without realizing that there might be
more obstacles with a public domain designation than a CC-BY license.

~~~
dublinben
If I am uploading historical photographs that are in the public domain, I
should absolutely have an easy way to mark them as such. Not everyone uses
Flickr like Instagram to share the last neat thing they saw on the street.

~~~
adrusi
OK, I overlooked this use-case.

~~~
jessamyn
Yeah I think you may be focusing on the "creative art" aspect of this and less
on other use cases. My mom is a retired photographer and she loves seeing
other people use or repurpose (and yes even sell) some of the pictures she
takes. In public libraries we want a way to share images the widest way
possible and don't always have our own space to do that.

I get that you're concerned that people don't understand the public domain,
but I think the response to that is more (and better) explanations about what
it is and why it's important, not disallowing people access to tools that they
want on a platform they use.

~~~
detaro
Which is a case where she should use CC0 and not the public domain marking.

