Over 150k botanical illustrations enter public domain | Hacker News Reader

Over 150k botanical illustrations enter public domain

hyperallergic.com

178 pointsbookofjoe26 comments

Wasn't this on here like three days ago? Or were those different images?

Yes it was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22295160

Does anyone else subscribe to Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't or am I just a weirdo on the internet asking myself rhetorical questions?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CBOpT2-NRvoc2ecFMDCsA

Such a great channel. I know next to nothing about botany, but the guys attitude just sucked me right in.

If there is one thing the internet taught me, is that everyone is a weirdo in one way or another (me included).

All images can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/sets/

Thanks. Wonderful!!

If you like that you might also be interested in the work of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility

https://www.gbif.org/

https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/gallery?taxon_key=6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Biodiversity_Informatio...

Wonderful resources. There's also the Biodiversity Heritage Library at https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

Uh, that's the one from the submission?

Ha, how did that not register??

And they will be on getty images with a €475 royalty free license in 5...4....3...

And you’ll get sued for using the public domain pics on your website instead Of paying Getty

I think this is a common misunderstanding. The images are in the public domain. Nothing stops Getty (or you, or anyone) from selling them, even though you can just use them for free.

The value-add service that Getty offers is legal indemnification, i.e. they cover the legal costs if the image turns out to be copyrighted after all. To offer this service they spend some time and money upfront to research images' copyright status.

Whether you think that's good value for money is up to you.

> they spend some time and money upfront to research images' copyright status.

From the discussion a few days ago, that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be more like they just gamble on not getting caught most of the time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340547

If they really do indemnify you, it's actually a pretty huge benefit. It's pretty easy to use content that is 'royalty free' but then get sued later on when you find out it actually wasn't.

I don't misunderstand it at all. I am aware its legal. I just think that getty should be completely transparent about the copyright status, instead of granting a restricted license to use something they don't own the rights to grant in the first place.

The other issue brought up recently is when they try to enforce their licencing of public domain images, which is a lot more shady. Selling you a licence, sure, why not. Complaining you’re using a public domain image without getty’s licence? Threatening legal action over the same?

There may be a lot of value to a lot of their portfolio. But there’s some warty rough edges too.

My thought exactly...

there was a recent thread on HN about how immoral Getty's business model is, sending veiled treats to people regarding the use of content they don't even own at first place.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340178

Would be interesting to see these fed into a generative adversarial network (GAN) to create illustrations of new species.

Yes! This has been done for beetles with similar artwork:

https://www.cunicode.com/works/confusing-coleopterists

There is also text alongside the images at the source. It would be exciting if the GAN could write an excerpt alongside its creation.

Side note: is there something that already exists to modernize old English?

Saw it done after the previous HN discussion, but can't find the ephemeral tweet. Here's another implementation from last year though - https://twitter.com/fuse_works/status/1206975474804690944

It looks like they all are compressed with a quality of only 75. Are they available somewhere with better quality? Also is there some metadata available?

I don't know much about copyright law but presumably these were technically public domain already, even if they weren't generally available. I wonder whether they are still of use to scientists.

that book with beetle and butterfly images looks incredible and is bookmarked! thanks for sharing.

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