Show HN: Collection of free illustrations like undraw | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Collection of free illustrations like undraw

vektors.pro

116 pointsvicke417 comments

As with many of these low effort sites aggregating the work of others, licensing is clearly an afterthought. It's especially strange on this site that time has been taken to create a "CC" tag, but without actually doing any the Creative Commons attribution for using the image. e.g. https://www.vektors.pro/illustration-packs/b-w-illustrations

And some have been incorrectly tagged with both "CC" and "No attribution required but appreciated" e.g. https://www.vektors.pro/illustration-packs/saly-3d-illustrat...

Or there are some with custom licenses that have been left untagged, with just a "Get for free" CTA. e.g. https://www.vektors.pro/illustration-packs/onboarding-illust...

Taking 5 seconds to download the resource and open Licence.txt reveals:

> ...You do not have rights to redistribute, resell, lease, license, sub-license or offer this resource to any third party «as is». If you want to use this resource as a part of a product intended to be sold via any marketplace, please contact the author of the freebie to get an extended license...

If you want to be sloppy with distributing your own work and just want Product Hunt points, fair enough. But if you are distributing other people's, then at least make sure it's done right.

Thank you for the comment. We do not plan on redistributing others' content. That would be totally against our primary goal for this project. We just provide links (no downloads from our site) to the original works so that the illustrator gets more traffic for himself and his other works. Sorry about the redundancy. We try to keep the license info as simple and accurate as possible. Currently, We only provide license info for CC/MIT and let users read custom licenses from the original site. Also, we are always ready to respect the decision of the creator if he finds a problem with his work being showcased.

You are using high resolution images licensed under, for example, CC BY 4.0 on your website without providing a link to the license:

e.g. https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5fba626e86ad1be131127616/5fc... on https://www.vektors.pro/illustration-packs/b-w-illustrations

Maybe it could be argued that this is fair use, but why not just go the extra mile and do it properly?

> We try to keep the license info as simple and accurate as possible.

If the licensing information was "simple and accurate" there wouldn't be an issue. It's missing, misleading or incorrect in many cases.

And on the subject of content removal, this is from https://www.vektors.pro/privacy-policy

> If you find any link on our Website that is offensive for any reason, you are free to contact and inform us any moment. We will consider requests to remove links, but we are not obligated to or so or to respond to you directly.

How are creators supposed to contact you? There are no "proper" contact details in the header, footer, terms and conditions or privacy policy, just a Twitter link.

Thank you for these suggestions. We will definitely consider adding links to the license files. Also, we are very much limited to our twitter account for communication but will surely set up something on our site very soon.

You’re gonna “consider” complying with the law?

Sorry for the wrong use of words there. As mentioned in the earlier comment, use of cc licensed image in our site can be considered under fair use. We will still insert the license going forward as it makes it more simpler and straightforward. Do check out the link below to see how it works along with a CC license. Also, we would definitely get more legal advice on this going forward. Thanks for understanding. https://creativecommonsusa.org/index.php/ufaqs/what-is-the-d....

> use of cc licensed image in our site can be considered under fair use

This is 100% incorrect and not what fair use means, ask a lawyer.

> We will still insert the license going forward as it makes it more simpler and straightforward.

It's also legally required, and for many licenses (most CC licenses) you not only need to somehow include the license but also attribution.

I know very well how CC works, and if you would please read the link you yourself posted, you will understand that the way you are using these images clearly does not fall under fair use, as a compilation/library of anything whether that's images or songs or movies or whatever is not "news reporting, teaching, [or] parody" -- what these examples all have in common is that you're creating a derivative work ON TOP of the original work, which is why it's "fair use".

Hello there. Thanks for your help. I have reviewed all the licenses and included them accordingly.

This is a downright misleading website.

Tag line: "Find awesome free illustration packs for all your projects."

The first pack I clicked on (https://www.vektors.pro/illustration-packs/open-source-illus...)

Contains at least 3 trademarks(Nintendo, Marvel, and Sega), and you'd be opening yourself up to a lawsuit if you used them in a commercial endeavor.

Cool stuff, I enjoy seeing more and more of these free illustrations popping up. They can make a serious difference in the look and feel of a landing page or a blog. My favourite one recently is Scale By Flexiple https://2.flexiple.com/scale/home which is very similar to undraw.

Thank you, Ivice This one looks good. We will keep adding more to our collection.

Yes, but we focused more on the "search using tags" feature to make it easier to discover unique packs as required by the user. We found that in many other similar sites, it is hard to find the right illustrations.

Hey, thanks for making it easier to devalue the work of artists! I really appreciate the way sites like this make it easier for people to do stuff without ever even thinking about paying someone who's spent years of their life learning how to distill complex concepts down into simple images to do something for them.

This seems like to be just an aggregate site with (incorrect) tagging and links to originals works.

Full disclosure: I just know this site via HN

Nicely aggregated.

Thank you Germanka. Hope you found it useful.

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