Curated free-to-use space photography | Hacker News Reader

Curated free-to-use space photography

peek.space

80 pointssebkomianos30 comments

Here we have a "curator" saying these photos are from "Source: NASA", but with no additional details provided. No original source or URL, no captions, no detail on cropping or manipulation, just a collection of "the best ones" he's found somewhere on the Internet. Nice to look at but lacking all context.

I agree, I would like better attribution, and possibly some context. The photos are beautiful, but with some information about what I am looking at, it would be much more interesting.

I’m in Germany where you can’t give up your “Urheberrecht” (literal: Creator’s right, equivalent to copyright) so technically NASA’s (or other US government agencies) photos are copyrighted here—even if they're public domain in the US. Anybody ever looked into that?

If the person you pay to worry about that kind of stuff is worried about the risk of NASA suing you, you should probably get a better worrier. Or is there something here I'm missing?

It's not the risk of NASA suing you but the risk of the original creator suing you. As copyright can't be transferred under German law, it was never transferred to NASA in the first place from Germany's point of view. Unlikely, but might happen.

So if I write an article on assignment for a German newspaper, I own the copyright still?

Huh.

Yes, you'll own the copyright but usually sign away almost all rights that go along with that. There is only one small thing that they can't do: Change your article substantially and still put your name on.

That seems really unlikely to me unless the photographer in question was a German citizen, or the photo was taken in Germany. Otherwise they would not have standing in Germany. It would come down to international copyright agreements like ACTA and I don't think those allow each nation to spread their own copyright laws over the entire globe.

But really vinceguidry is right here: the risk calculation for copyright is not just what the law says, but what is the practical likelihood of being sued under the law. This is true across the board; it's how a million blogs get away with using copyrighted photos on their blog posts.

No, the relevant law is the one where a work is published. For this you don't need to spread law around the globe. There are known cases where a work was already in public domain in the country of creation but not in Germany and the heirs successfully sued in German court.

Yes, in this case the chance of getting sued is pretty small, but it's there. See for example the US government's own statement:

> Copyright laws differ internationally. While a U.S. government work is not protectable under U.S. copyright laws, the work may be protected under the copyright laws of other jurisdictions when used in these jurisdictions. The U.S. government may assert copyright outside of the United States for U.S. government works.

http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml#Exceptions

Many German blogs stopped using copyrighted photos (at least much less use such photos than blogs in other countries do) because you are actually at risk of being sued. Some people lost quite a lot of money for doing this.

If you know of a case where a U.S. federal government employee successfully sued for their copyright in Germany on a photo they made in the course of their official duties with the U.S. government, I'd appreciate if you could point me in the right direction.

I'm familiar with the idea that copyright expirations can take longer in Germany vs. the U.S., and that the U.S. government reserves the right to assert copyright internationally. But I've never heard of a case like I mention above. Thanks.

The US governments specifically preservers the rights for their work abroad (see my other comments for citations). I know no case where they actually enforced that and therefore personally I'd take the risk of using US government work. However, I know that if they started suing I'd loose.

Ok, I agree with that, but what you said above is, "It's not the risk of NASA suing you but the risk of the original creator suing you." I've never heard of such a case.

I can't verify what contract the employee signed with NASA. If they retain rights to use the work abroad (we don't know) they potentially could sue you. Again, the risk is minimal but it's present. I can't name you a specific case, only that if it ever gets to court a user of such an image in Germany never rightfully acquired a license and will therefore loose.

So, let's say you're in Germany running a blog. You've made a few questionable image choices and now the people owning the images decides they want to be a dick and come after you for royalties. What's your exposure here? Is it something where all you need to do is take the infringing content down and that's the end of it? Or are you potentially on the hook for monetary damages going all the way back to where you first published the images?

Don't tell me that that's a question for a lawyer, because you should know about the risks regularly taken in your industry that can produce outsized penalties. You don't become a surgeon without the understanding that surgical malpractice could ruin your career, even though it almost never happens. If you don't know, you're just being naive.

Even if you did potentially have that liability, what's the likelihood that they'll actually exercise it? Sure, the US Government will want to retain as many rights as they can, but realistically they don't really give a shit unless you make them give a shit. If your clients are putting space images up in the service of saying that the US is horrible and should be boycotted or whatever, absolutely you'll have poked a hornet's nest and they're going to assign a bureaucrat the job of making your life hell.

But if you use the damn gifts you were given in the spirit in which they're given, do you really need to let fear guide your choices here?

These cases are usually settled for a few hundred Euro, which is what a court would set anyway. As there have been quite a few trials of this kind the sums are pretty well established.

That is well known in the German blogging scene. For example, "Marions Kochbuch" is a website with cooking photos that some people say only exists to serve notices to unsuspecting bloggers that use their photos. Every few weeks a new case of someone who didn't know makes rounds in the German-speaking internet scence.

Personally I would use US government photos on my website (but not random other photos found on the web). But I know that I'd take a small risk with that. The US lawmakers specifically wanted to preserve rights abroad, who knows whether the government will actually start to enforce it:

> The prohibition on copyright protection for United States Government works is not intended to have any effect on protection of these works abroad. Works of the governments of most other countries are copyrighted. There are no valid policy reasons for denying such protection to United States Government works in foreign countries, or for precluding the Government from making licenses for the use of its works abroad.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_Revision_(House_...

I’m not sure I understand your comment. I’m a graphic designer and would love to incorporate NASA* pics in my work, but—except for personal projects—can’t, because I would put my clients at risk. Was hoping someone knew something I don’t or that the US government had addressed the issue in the past.

Edit to add:*Or other agencies. Few months ago I went to an exhibition in Berlin of Walker Evans’ photographs. Some of those he did for the Farm Security Administration in the 1940s. And I was thinking about the copyright situation. This thread was a welcome chance to pick hacker news’ minds …

What risk would you be putting your clients in? At most it's worth a 15 second discussion. "Hey, I'd like to use these space images, technically they're owned by NASA but NASA doesn't charge anyone or sue over copyright. Do you want me to find someone to sell you some images or are these fine?" Then everyone's on the same page.

Does Germany have distinction between creator's "personal rights" and "property rights"? In Poland you can't give up your "creator's personal rights", i.e. the right to have a work associated with your name, but you can pass your "property rights" - the rights to profit from the work - to someone else.

The creator can give a perpetual license but never gives up creators rights. Germany actually has public domain (Gemeinfreiheit) but according to general professional view this can only apply after copyright has expired.

This is always a valid concern, and I wish more people brought it up. It's why things like CC0, the Unlicense, and (my personal favorite) the WTPL exist. Truth be told, though, I'm not 100% sure it's relevant here in term of US Gov't creations. Technically, these items were never copyrighted, so there aren't any rights to retain.

But that's moot, since US law only extends to the US (tell that to the MPAA). Government creations ARE copyrighted works in many countries, which leads to the interesting notion that the US gov't may hold rights in foreign countries but not the US.

IANAL.

Technically (under German law) any creation is automatically copyrighted the moment it's created. Whether US law says it wasn't is not relevant for a German court. The chance of the creator suing is small but it's not zero.

CC0 and the like carefully work around these laws (which exist in many countries beside Germany) by giving you a license to do anything with the work (while retaining copyright – but that's only a technical distinction).

Of course one might argue that a US government worker implicitly gave up their rights in a similar way, but as far as I'm aware nobody looked into that yet.

Yes people have looked into US government agency copyright outside of the US see links in first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#U.S._g... though don't know if anyone has specifically looked into US government works and German law.

That entry has a link to http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml#Exceptions

“The U.S. government may assert copyright outside of the United States for U.S. government works.”

Too bad :/

In case someone is interested, one of the most beautiful photos in this collection (parachute over the clouds) is by Bill Ingalls and is licensed under Creative Commons Non Commercial license. (so you aren't completely free to use it)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/16604583049/

It shows Soyuz TMA-14M bringing back astronauts from ISS.

While attempting to view some of the full-sized images, I got an error message from Unicorn saying "No servers are available to service your request. Might I suggest using a static file host of some kind for the full sized images?

Not a fan of the rounded corners/edges, but the photos are more than beautiful enough to make up for it.

Another one: unsplash.com

I don't think that this is a photo:

http://peek.space/art/peek-space-img-24/

Indeed, its an "Artist concept of Ganymede and Jupiter"[1], which only further highlights the pointlessness of having an collection of space images without any metadata.

[1]:http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/march/nasa-s-hubble-observati...

Holy crap, some of these images are beyond beautiful.

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