Nature photographer John Fielder donates life’s work to public domain | Hacker News Reader

Nature photographer John Fielder donates life’s work to public domain

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287 pointsSantosh8356 comments

This is a nice thing to do, and at the same time I'm saddened that parasites like Adobe and Getty can start profiting off these as they have in the past. Legally parasitical.

Also a question. How could I, a nobody, 'donate' my photography to public domain? An organization wouldn't give a hoot about me, so are there sites that can 'take' photos and host them as public domain?

Obligatory IANAL.

You put your works into the Public Domain by explicitly forfeiting or waiving exclusive intellectual property rights[1].

TL;DR: A Public Domain work is a work to which nobody holds nor asserts copyright.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

Though you're probably better using one of the existing "public domain licenses" as opposed to inventing your own disclaimer. There's CC0 (there's some problematic patent language but that's mostly only a concern with software) and MIT-0. This still doesn't make everything necessarily public domain everywhere in the world but it's the best you can do.

> How could I, a nobody, 'donate' my photography to public domain? An organization wouldn't give a hoot about me, so are there sites that can 'take' photos and host them as public domain?

Wikimedia Commons, upload them with CC0 as the license. (CC0 is basically public domain, just with some legal language that makes it work in other countries than the US where public domain as a legal concept does not exist.)

or archive.org

I forget what the current terms are, but Flickr also had tons of public domain/CC0/CC-licensed images and didnt count them against quota afaik

CC0 is nice but why not CC 4.0 license? It still lets people use it for commercial use but has attribution. That way people can't sell the photo and claim it as their own, for example.

I think you mean CC BY 4.0. There's CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC-BY-NC, or other combinations of below:

  BY: attribution
  SA: share-alike
  NC: non-commercial
  ND: no derivatives

The "0" in CC0 just means no rights reserved. "4.0" is just the latest version of the legal code. There was a CC BY 3.0 and a CC BY 2.0, etc.

Oh yes, you're right. I think the most common one on Wikimedia Commons is CC BY-SA 4.0.

>Legally parasitical.

The whole point of public domain is that others can use it as they wish--including to make money. I doubt there's a big business in selling only public domain works except as perhaps a more curated and easier to use experience. But it certainly makes sense to sell quality public domain works as part of a larger catalog.

The argument here, I think, is that in 10, 20, 30 years, the site used to host the original PD works will either go offline or otherwise be buried in search results, when Getty et al stay #1 in the search results and charge for the PD work. This is why I largely consider releasing anything under the Public Domain to be a PR stunt; you can achieve the same results by just granting a more permissive license that says “don’t resell the work itself, but you may use it as part of any other work for any reason or for personal use”

> The argument here, I think, is that in 10, 20, 30 years, the site used to host the original PD works will either go offline or otherwise be buried in search results, when Getty et al stay #1 in the search results and charge for the PD work

Sounds like Getty et al would be providing a valuable service in that case.

Just because something is in the public domain doesn't mean an unspecified someone is required to bear the costs of hosting it and providing access with a good user experience, metadata, search, etc.

Fortunately, in many cases, organizations like the (in the US) the Library of Congress and non-profits like the Internet Archive do. But no one is required to do so. (Aside from some legal mandates in the case of the LoC.)

> Sounds like Getty et al would be providing a valuable service

What valuable service? they are extortionists - https://onehourprofessor.com/getty-images-demand-letter-gett...

Well, in the posed scenario, when the free option for acquiring the work is no longer available, but the paid option is still available - the service is making the work available at all when it otherwise wouldn't be.

So you're basically arguing against anything being in the public domain ever because someone other than the original creator might make money off of it--even if the alternative is for it not to be available at all.

And what does reselling the work itself mean? If I sell a picture book of Colorado that combines these photos with some maps and long captions, is that reselling the work? How about selling prints? That's a value-add service.

It seems you're missing a more interesting discussion point.

For all of its faults, one of the advantages conveyed by private property ownership is in creating an interest in that property.

The commons, whether real property or virtual as in the case of intellectual works, has no such protections, and there are relatively few institutions which seek to protect and defend it.

In cultural space we do have works which have been passed down through the ages, though many of those come through particularly long-lived institutions, most especially religious (the canonical texts of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, the Greek and Roman mythologies, etc.), but also educational (often tightly coupled with religious institutions), and more recently scientific organisations (again, often coupled with educational institutions, both religious and secular).

There are the traditions of libraries and museums as well.

And there are many instances in which cultural commons have been appropriated by commercial interests, the case of Disney being particularly prominent.

I think that raising the question of what institutions might serve to curate, shepherd, and defend common works, how those might be structured and organised, and what models serve as potential examples and instances, makes for a rather more compelling conversation. As well as a rather fairer read of the concern voiced.

Getty Images has millions of historical public domain images that they never paid for but charge a $1000 a pop for. They're bottom-feeders. Absolute scum.

So get those images from a different source. They're public domain. If they're not actually available from elsewhere without a lot of work then Getty seems to be providing a service.

Providing a service would be selling them with a reasonable markup. That's not the case.

Are you super-rich and unaffected by this, or do you just enjoy being reamed by massive rent-seeking corporations?

Wouldn’t it be better to release your photos under one of the Creative Commons licenses (other than cc0) if you don’t want those companies to profit of them?

With those licenses they’ll at least have to add the copyright notice. You could even disallow commercial use while giving other users the freedom to do with them as they please.

One of the problems with non-commercial clauses is that essentially all non-trivial/non-private uses can be argued to be commercial in some way. There was even a court case a while back that argued having a commercial service reproduce copies of an NC-licensed work was commercial activity in and of itself.

The general opinion of NC licensing is it makes the creator feel good about themselves but doesn't generally let others use the works.

Ah, I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.

Is there a license that says “OK for commercial uses except for resell”? CreativeCommons non-commercial doesn’t cut it if I were a photographer and wanted to allow using my photos as illustrations in some for-profit newspaper or magazine, or ad-supported blog, etc.—but not to capitalize on reselling them by the likes of Adobe and Getty, which strikes me as low-effort uncreative money-grab.

Wikimedia Commons! You can upload them there directly. The more tags you use the more useful and more discoverable your content will be

I'm a plant Wikipedian for example and am always looking for pictures of lesser known species or even just better photos of species that already have some. Sometimes I also browse iNaturalist (a citizen-scientist platform for making species observations) for observations labelled CC-BY or CC0 so if you're into nature photography, that could also be a relevant platform to check out

I assume you're likely not taking close-up shots of specific species though but any other articles covering semantic concepts presented in your photos may likely benefit from your contributions

This. Over the years, I have donated many automotive photos to wikimedia as public domain, CC0.

I love Wikimedia Commons and have uploaded many photos across the years. But it is a pity that the Featured Picture Candidate process is almost entirely run by a cabal of people who have been there for years and have a rather narrow view of what makes a photo good, as well as poor technical understanding.

Interesting! From what I understand the candidates are nominated by the community.[0] Is it the people who organize the event or the people who are voting that you think have the narrow view?

[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_...

It is my opinion that the people who are active in voting tend to be the same group of people from many years ago, and some of them have a narrow view. Also, the most prolific photographers tend to focus on certain types of photos, leading to certain categories being heavily overrepresented (for example, there are tons of photos of church interiors in Europe). Therefore, I highly encourage more people to participate in the featured pictures project to have greater variety.

DeviantArt for example lets you choose the license for your publication, including some that are pretty close to public domain, like CC0.

Properly tagging, describing the images would also help with discoverability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Zero_...

> Donated by Fielder in January 2023, in the coming months it will be digitized and cataloged by History Colorado to make it easily accessible and searchable by the public.

And people/companies can download and use them as they wish? I don't want to be cynical (but this is HN) I hope we're not back here in 6 months, discussing how History Colorado has added some license, conditions etc.

I haven't been to Colorado - but these photographs make me want to visit.

Obligatory IANAL.

History Colorado is a "501(c)(3) charitable organization and an agency of the State of Colorado under the Department of Higher Education"[1].

Federal copyright law states "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties ... are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law and are therefore in the public domain."[2] This does not necessarily apply to state government employees.[3]

Colorado's state copyright laws, if any, are seemingly impossible to find with cursory Google-fu.

[1]: https://www.historycolorado.org/about

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_s...

[Ianal] Additionally, in the USA (but not all other places), digitizing a 2D piece of artwork does not add copyright to it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....

There is a summary of different country laws at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art_p...

History Colorado won't have legal standing to add licensing or conditions to their use.

They will have the technical ability to control initial distribution. So we can assume he's going to upload highest-resolution originals to their archives. HC may need to delay access to them, or they may only offer downscaled copies for download initially.

They could watermark or alter them in some way before distribution: since being in the public domain really means no restrictions on use or modifications, they can do anything they want upstream. I mean, they probably won't do watermarking, because I don't see it on other images in the "Collection" on the official website. We'll see if EXIF data is processed in any way. Or which formats will be distributed: you could hope for something lossless, right?

But a public domain dedication, properly done, is irrevocable. Fielder may choose to exempt certain works from dedication, for example if a photograph is monetized already, or used by a popular news agency, etc. But it looks like HC will have 5,000 out of 200,000 images, and will shortly release it for public consumption on the same searchable website.

https://www.historycolorado.org/press-release/2023/01/23/col...

You're shadow-banned since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33846088

> And people/companies can download and use them as they wish?

Why would this be a bad thing? Is there something specific about photos of Colorado scenery that would result in a negative outcome? Because there are already loads of public domain photos out there of natural scenery (the noteworthiness here is that such a comprehensive topical collection is integrally placed in the public domain).

The point of the comment was the complete opposite: that this is a good thing but that the custodians of this digitization may think they have a right to apply a license restricting usage.

"The nature photographer prides himself on having traveled to each of Colorado’s 104,984 square miles over the past 40 years"

While I think the only time I've been on Colorado ground was a transfer at Denver airport, I understand it has pretty rugged geography. Is that statement even remotely possible to be true?

Yes why not, unless an entire square mile of land was completely inaccessible, setting foot on an inch of it anywhere makes his claim true. According to the article, he was an expert with printed maps, so I'm inclined to believe he accurately mapped his own travels.

Visited may also include seen or laid eyes upon every square mile. This is a photographer. I visited the Eiffel tower as a kid. I didn't go inside.

I think he probably means he’s seen every square mile. I live in CO and run ultramarathons in the mountains and backcountry here. There are squares miles that are almost certainly inaccessible even on foot due to terrain, grade or property rights.

I’m a giant fan of John and his work, but I tend to agree. DIA has 50+ square miles and it’s basically private. Malone and the Kronkes own some big chunks of land, not sure if they leave them open. There are some places on the western slope, north central to north western Colorado and the in the south east where it could be dry challenging to get to. With forestry support, I think it is possible but not easy. There are probably multiple square miles sections of BLM range in the north east without any real access roads; nothing prevents you from getting there but it’d be a long hike or horseback/atv ride with maybe not a lot of photographic targets.

It sounds like hyperbole, but John is a Colorado legend and if he says it, then I think it is true or shockingly close to being true. He has tons of photographic evidence of being in a lot of fairly challenging to visit places.

I thought of DIA and it's pretty massive and I'm pretty sure a private individual isn't going to be wandering out by the runways, service hangers, and so forth. And I'm sure there are some huge private ranches as well.

Plus Rocky Flats. And I’m not sure if the Rocky Mountain Arsenal is completely visitable

If anyone could get permission to go on private lands for non-essential purposes like photography, surely it'd be Fielder?

DIA has not been around for 40 years. Maybe he went to those square miles before it was built?

That seems correct. A square mile is actually fairly large. It almost certainly means getting well into the backcountry but it doesn't mean having summited every peak.

Square miles is pretty large. ~1/2 of CO is the plains, not the rugged mountains you're thinking of. Still an amazing feat, but one I think can be done.

Another popular thing to do in CO is hike all 58 '14ers' (peaks over 14k feet). I only lived there a couple years, but managed to do 5 without too much planning. An outdoor person, doing outdoor things over 40 years...it makes sense.

Photos should become available sometimes in the spring. https://www.johnfielder.com/

It also gives him a museum that will often feature some of his work as part of their exhibits.

The Diffusion Algorithms Roar in Hungry Anticipation!

Should be a great source of high quality images for Wikipedia articles.

What an inspiring thing to do!

> Fielder’s photography has influenced policy that protects Colorado lands including Congress’ Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993, which created 36 federally protected Wilderness areas that amount to 660,000 acres.

It's a real shame there's not a built in way to get notified in 6 months to check this stuff out. Guess I'll add it to my calendar.

Nominative Determinism strikes again!

that's my wallpapers sorted

God, I'd donate away that lot too...

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