SpaceX Just Retroactively Put Copyright Restrictions on Its Photos; Motherboard, December 11, 2019

Karl Bode, Motherboard;

SpaceX Just Retroactively Put Copyright Restrictions on Its Photos

"As SpaceX began supplanting NASA in humanity’s quest to explore outer space, Motherboard pondered in 2015 what would happen to the public’s unfettered access to space imagery data (images taken by NASA are in the public domain and can be used by anyone for almost any purpose.) Thankfully, SpaceX soon after made the important decision to offer mission images under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License, allowing them to be freely shared and even remixed by anyone. This is the least-restrictive Creative Commons license in existence and allows anyone to use the photos for almost anything (you could, for example, make and sell a photo book or calendar of SpaceX images if you wanted to.)

But a little noticed change to the SpaceX Flickr account this week stripped away the CC0 license affixed to the company’s images, replacing it with an “Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic” license. That, in turn, imposed notable and potentially confusing restrictions on how those images can be shared and re-used."

This open-access picture book from the ‘70s shows how glorious the space race really was; Science Alert, 3/24/16

Jacinta Bowler, Science Alert; This open-access picture book from the ‘70s shows how glorious the space race really was:

"The ‘70s were an exciting time for space exploration. We landed on the Moon in 1969, the Russian Mars 2 probe explored the surface of the red planet in 1973, and things were looking bright for future of space travel.

These recently uploaded - and incredible to look at - illustrations tell the story of the space race, showing just how optimistic we all were back then, as well as some of the cutting edge research and technology from the time...

You can see more high quality images and excerpts all free on Flickr...

But if reading is more your thing, IF Magazine is another science blast from the past that we can’t get over. Launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, the science fiction magazine was only ever moderately successful during its relatively short run, but the amazing illustrations and stories inside are timeless, and give a great insight into what we thought the future would look like, from more than half a century ago.

Check out the whole collection here."

Professors Publish Guide to Copyright Issues of Multimedia Projects; Wired Campus, 11/17/10

Paige Chapman, Wired Campus; Professors Publish Guide to Copyright Issues of Multimedia Projects:

"Students often create multimedia projects for classes that blend in clips from YouTube videos or hit songs, and many want to post their creations online for a wider audience. But does that violate copyright law?

It might, and many students fail to understand the legal risks. A new study, titled “Copying Right and Copying Wrong With Web 2.0 Tools in the Teacher Education and Communications Classrooms,” attempts to educate students about both the appropriate and inappropriate ways to use copyrighted materials that are available to mass audiences on the Internet."

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professors-publish-guide-to-copyright-issues-of-multimedia-projects/28254

With Flickr Layoffs, Whither 'The Commons'?, Wired.com, 12/30/08

Via Wired.com: With Flickr Layoffs, Whither 'The Commons'?:

"In mid-December, when Yahoo laid off George Oates, one of the original employees of the photo-sharing website Flickr, Oates immediately feared for The Commons, Flickr's project to have its millions of members turn their distributed intelligence to the world's photo archives.

Though less than a year old, The Commons hosts tens of thousands of copyright-free historical photos from 17 cultural institutions including the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library."

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/with-layoffs-wh.html