[OpenGLAM] One Hundred Million Creative Commons Flickr Images for Research

Tue Jul 1 00:16:00 UTC 2014

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 3:19 AM, Estermann Beat <beat.estermann at bfh.ch>
wrote:

> As I understood it, Timothy argued to the contrary.
>
>
>
> Why on earth would you assume that metadata of non-free images would be
> copyrightable?
>
> And why on earth would you assume that the CC-license applied to an image
> would govern the use of the associated metadata? (the metadata are just a
> collection of facts about a given object that may be gathered by anyone,
> and certainly not part of the creative act leading to the image).
>
>
>
> There are rare cases where parts of metadata may be copyrightable (if for
> example someone adds poetic descriptions to images, which can be seen as
> creative works in their own right). – In this case, you can just remove
> these descriptions from your dataset, and you are left with a freely
> useable set of metadata.
>

Right, and this is what comes up when you're talking about the metadata in
the flickr set. If you look at some of the types of metadata they're
providing in the database...

photo_id, jpeg url, title, description, title, camera type, title, tags

...some are likely not protected by copyright, like "photo_id" or "url" or
"camera type". But I suppose some fields would contain creativity that
would be copyrightable--such as "tags" or "description". I assume that the
CC license only applies to the image itself, although I don't know what the
Flickr TOS say. But let's assume this is the case. Then you're left with a
situation where Flickr is offering a dataset of metadata where some of the
data is not protected by copyright, but other data (for example,
"description") is. So then it seems that Yahoo would have to figure out how
they're able to license this content if they want to include it in their
database. Perhaps they're doing it through the blanket nonexclusive license
that users most likely grant to Flickr when the agree to the terms of
service.  I'm not entirely sure. Is anyone more familiar with their terms
of use than I am?

tvol

>
>
> In some countries (e.g. in the European Union) there are sui generis
> rights on databases which may be applicable to metadata catalogues; but
> this is not the case here – neither with Flickr nor with Wikimedia Commons.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Beat
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* open-glam [mailto:open-glam-bounces at lists.okfn.org] *On Behalf Of
> *Sebastiaan ter Burg
> *Sent:* Donnerstag, 26. Juni 2014 11:54
> *To:* Laurel L. Russwurm
> *Cc:* open-glam at lists.okfn.org
> *Subject:* Re: [OpenGLAM] One Hundred Million Creative Commons Flickr
> Images for Research
>
>
>
> Timothy,
>
>
>
> thank you for bringing up the distinction between images and metadata.
> This could have some big consequences for Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata
> projects.
>
>
>
> I assumed that metadata is available under the same license as the image
> because it is 'part of' the image. And that metadata of non CC licensed
> images cannot be used without the creators permission. I'm currently
> involved in projects with/for GLAMs to separate images and metadata on the
> Wiki platforms. Content donations to Wikimedia Commons now include images
> and metadata. In the future the metadata would ideally be stored in
> Wikidata and the image file (with just basic information) on Wikimedia
> Commons. Does this mean that we are only able to store the metadata of
> images in Wikidata for new uploads and that we are not allowed to harvest
> the metadata from existing files on Wikimedia Commons?
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Sebastiaan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 2014-06-25 19:11 GMT+02:00 Laurel L. Russwurm <laurel.l at russwurm.org>:
>
> Thanks, Ben.
>
> I do know enough about privacy and security concerns to be aware that
> de-identification is almost always ineffective.
>
> For ordinary people, google is the gold standard.  When I need an image, I
> search flickr and google, because their searches allow me to search for
> images with free culture licenses.  (I see no point in bothering with
> non-free culture images.  Ever.)   Image search is the only reason I still
> use Google search at all.  Admittedly I have not investigated the
> competition recently, but when I did, of the few alternatives available, no
> other image search allowed this type of search.
>
> The tag No Known Copyright' irritates me as well, because this is not an
> accurate description of public domain material.  There are a great many
> works well and truly in the public domain everywhere.  Works that existed
> before copyright law, for instance.
>
> When I post public domain images to flickr, I tag them as well as
> including a block of text in the description to explain this.  Only a small
> amount of what I post is PD; so long as there is copyright law, I will use
> licenses for my own original work, so it wouldn't be worthwhile to set up
> for the commons.  If you want to upload material that is not 'No Known
> Copyright' I suggest you set up an auxiliary account to do so.  (When you
> say "We were forced tobecome a member of 'The Commons'" suggests you are
> part of a group, so presumably a different part of the group/affiliated
> individual could reasonably have another account to post such material
> without falling afoul of Flickr's TOS.
>
> Regards,
> Laurel
>
>
>
> On 06/25/2014 12:06 PM, Ben O'Steen wrote:
>
> Re: image search. I've found the search not to be comprehensive and when
> new metadata is added, the index updates in a unreliable manner. I
> regularly harvest the metadata for the images I've uploaded, and have found
> distinct discrepancies between what data I know is there, and what turns up
> in the search results. For example, a number of the images require
> rotating, and Flickr does not offer a way for a user to indicate that to
> the account owner. I suggested to people to tag them with "rotate" to flag
> them up. A search of images tagged with 'rotate' and belonging to my
> account differs considerably from the tag information I know about from my
> daily harvests.
>
>
>
> For example, this search is meant to show any image with the tag 'rotate':
>
>
>
>
> https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=rotate&m=tags&ss=2&ct=6&mt=all&w=12403504%40N02&adv=1
>
>
>
> You may notice that majority of these do not need rotating any longer, and
> do not bear the 'rotate' tag. They likely will all have the 'rotated' tag
> however. A search for this 'rotated' tag shows a different picture again. I
> know that as of 5am this morning, 6462 images have the rotated tag, which
> is a different number to what the search gives me.
>
>
>
>
> https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=rotated&m=tags&ss=2&ct=6&mt=all&w=12403504%40N02&adv=1
>
>
>
> The search may be better than google's but that isn't saying much. The
> search is also built with textual data. I know that Flickr are
> experimenting behind the scenes with image analysis to provide other routes
> to explore and cluster images together. Imagine if every image on Flickr is
> OCRd, or has a field added indicating the three main colours in the image
> for example. With images, we should strive to do better than a simple
> text-only search.
>
>
>
> You are absolutely right to be worried about privacy and licensing
> concerns. They seem to be glossed over. They are pushing the responsibility
> onto researchers but without making it clear that the images have a range
> of licences. Hidden in the T&C for Flickr's sandbox area is a clause saying
> that you must not use it to derive any personally identifying information.
> Leigh Dodds has captured it and put it up for viewing here:
> https://gist.github.com/ldodds/28367dfc533487ea7c5b (line 12 is the key
> line)
>
>
>
> And yes, Flickr should just let any user upload with a CC0/PDDL type
> licence if they wish, a real PITA. We were forced to become a member of
> 'The Commons' to do so and now we have no opportunity to use a different
> licence on subsequent photos uploaded to that account. (It always shows 'No
> Known Copyright', regardless of the license I try to apply.)
>
>
>
> Ben
>
>
>
> On 25 June 2014 16:35, Laurel L. Russwurm <laurel.l at russwurm.org> wrote:
>
> Perhaps I just don't understand the point of this, but it seems to me that
> Flickr already has an image search capability at least as good (if not
> better than) Google's... and I suspect Google has done something to limit
> the incidence of Flickr returns in its own search method.
>
> My privacy hackles are raised by:
>
> "the task is to build a system capable of accurately predicting where in
> the world the photos and videos were taken without using the longitude and
> latitude coordinates."
>
> Guess its time to only limit cc images purged of metadata or maybe to stop
> posting cc images to flickr at all.
>
> Personally I think it would be much more useful and cost Flickr much less
> to add the capability for users to post CC0 and public domain marked
> images.
>
> Regards,
> Laurel L. Russwurm
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 06/25/2014 05:04 AM, Ben O'Steen wrote:
>
> An excellent initiative from its description :) It will be interesting to
> see how this actually pans out.
>
>
>
> Ben
>
>
>
> On 25 June 2014 09:35, Johan Oomen <joomen at beeldengeluid.nl> wrote:
>
> Good morning (for those in Europe;-),
>
> I just came across this announcement from Yahoo Labs: "One Hundred Million
> Creative Commons Flickr Images for Research”.
>
> More information here:
> http://yahoolabs.tumblr.com/post/89783581601/one-hundred-million-creative-commons-flickr-images-for
>
> Best wishes,
> Johan
> @johanoomen
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> --
> Laurel L. Russwurm, Author <http://laurel.russwurm.org/blogs/> § about.me
> <http://about.me/laurelrusswurm> § Libreleft Books <http://libreleft.com>
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> Laurel L. Russwurm, Author <http://laurel.russwurm.org/blogs/> § about.me
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> Sebastiaan ter Burg
>
> *Projectleider Culturele Samenwerking*
>
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-- 
Timothy Vollmer
Public Policy Manager, Creative Commons
Get Creative Commons Updates http://bit.ly/commonsnews
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