April 1, 2015 at 17:55

Flickr put an end to the issue of licensing photos SpaceX

    The site added the ability to transfer images to the public domain


    On Monday, the Flickr photo service added the ability to post images on the website under the CC0 license and in the public domain. Prior to this, Flickr could upload photos under various Creative Commons licenses or retain full rights. Thus, the point was put in transferring SpaceX photos to the public domain.

    In February, a number of technical publications drew attention to the issue of copyright photographs of the space company Ilon Mask: NASA materials are the property of all mankind, and SpaceX retained the rights to their photos. For the first time, an EFF activist Parker Higgins pointed out a problem . SpaceX representatives assured that it is being resolved. In March, the company really opened an accounton the Flickr photo service and uploaded dozens of photos under the CC BY-NC 2.0 license , which prohibits commercial use, but at the same time permits processing and distribution under the conditions of attribution.

    This action has been criticized: it is far from being in the public domain, authorship must always be indicated, for example, you cannot print an image on a T-shirt and sell it. For comparison: most NASA photos can be used for absolutely any purpose. And indeed there are cult photos , the rights to which do not belong to anyone, because they were taken by the American space agency.

    Elon Musk announced the publication of photos under CC BY-NC 2.0 in his Twitter account. “But why not the public domain? What to lose? ”One of the users asked. “Good suggestion,” Musk replied. “We just changed the license to the fully public domain.”


    But on the Flickr website at that time it was not possible to license content for CC0 - such an option in the interface simply did not exist. Therefore, the CC BY-NC 2.0 icon under the photos of the spacexphotos account has changed to CC BY 2.0 . This is again not a public domain, but the terms of the license are as free as possible: content can be distributed, processed, including benefiting from it. But what really needs to be trusted: the explicit indication of the license for each of the photos or the words from the Mask tweeter, the founder and head of the company?


    Finally, Flickr himself entered into the matter. The site has a lot of works from US government, as well as a variety of museums, galleries, libraries, archives. Flickr has supported Creative Commons since 2004. Many users have long requested adding the ability to upload images that are copyright protected, i.e. under Creative Commons 0 or as a public domain. And since Monday, these options have appeared. The reason was the desire of the community, but the reason was the case of SpaceX and the attention of the blogosphere . That is, for the holiday in the camp of supporters of free licenses you need to thank the company Mask.

    Now under each of the photos of the SpaceX account on Flickr there is a warning about the absence of any copyright on it.

    Brief Terms of Use Public Domain
    CC0 Information
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