GBIF integration

[Ken-ichi]

Hi folks,

We're planning on becoming a GBIF data provider. The Global
Biodiversity Informatics Facility (GBIF, http://www.gbif.org) is an
international, inter-governmental organization dedicated to compiling
and distributing biodiversity information from around the world. A
lot of their data come from museum collections, but an increasing
amount comes from citizen science efforts like eBird. Many scientists
use GBIF data in their work, so we think becoming a provider will help
make the data you guys generate more accessible.

A couple things to keep in mind:

1) we will only be sending them research-grade observations

2) we will *not* be sending them private or obscured coordinates (they
will see the same coordinates that a logged out person would see on
iNat)

3) observers are credited using their full name if we have it, and
failing that their username

4) we'll regenerate the data we send to GBIF weekly (or something like
that, weekly seems reasonable to me)

5) if you change or delete data from iNat, the corresponding records
at GBIF may not be changed or deleted for several weeks (apparently
that's what their turnaround is like)

If this does *not* sound like something you want to participate in,
you can opt out by viewing your profile on iNat, clicking "Edit
account settings & profile" on the lower right, and unchecking the
"Share with GBIF" option.

We probably need to tinker with this a bit still, but if you want to
see what we'll be sending them, it will look something like this:
http://www.inaturalist.org/gbif-observations-dwca.tgz

If you have comments or questions, fire away!

-ken-ichi

[Eric Hunt]

Ken-ichi, Scott,

I'm totally for this, but good website data sharing practices mean you should make this opt-in instead of opt-out.

Do you have any legal counsel reviewing things? You're straying into areas that could be regulated by the government when you share user data with 3rd parties.

-Eric

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[Ken-ichi]

> I'm totally for this, but good website data sharing practices mean you should make this opt-in instead of opt-out.

Well, I think that's subjective. I think most people will be
interested in sharing their data with GBIF, so I went with opt-out.
If we make it opt-in, we'll have less data to share. On the other
hand, you could argue that it's our responsibility to make opting in
easy and appealing. Anyone else for opt-in?

> Do you have any legal counsel reviewing things? You're straying into areas that could be regulated by the government when you share user data with 3rd parties.

Not at the moment, though I'm sure we could get someone to consider
it. Can you cite any particular laws?

-ken-ichi

[Michael Rosenberg]

I see both sides here. I love the idea of GBIF integration, but I admit I tend to get annoyed with sites that default to opt-out rather than opt-in. This is generally more of a problem with sites like Facebook, but for consistency I probably feel it should be opt-in. You might want to do some major advertising on the site to encourage users to opt-in, but in the long run it will likely cause fewer complaints. You could make it opt-out for new users as long as there is a clear question that asks them what they want to do when they register for the site, but for current users it's kind of a change in policy that some (however unlikely) will object to.

[Eric Hunt]

Ken-ichi,

When it boils down to it, you are a site that collects user-supplied data. That data is not yours to do with as you please. Ethically and probably legally you have an obligation to protect that data and give your users to full control over what you do with the data they supply.

I looked at your Terms of Service. From my layman's reading of your TOS, I don't think you have the rights to distribute user-supplied data to outside entities.

"By submitting Content to iNaturalist for inclusion on your Website, you grant iNaturalist a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your observations and journal."

There is no mention of sharing Content with third parties anywhere in the Terms of Service.

I now firmly believe you have a fair amount of work to do before sharing data with outside parties. You absolutely must get a lawyer, to protect yourself. iNaturalist does not appear to be incorporated. I am pretty sure that leaves you and Scott with personal liability for claims against iNaturalist.

I was also bothered by these two sections in the TOS and Privacy Policy:

TOS:
"Changes. iNaturalist reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to modify or replace any part of this Agreement. It is your responsibility to check this Agreement periodically for changes. Your continued use of or access to the Website following the posting of any changes to this Agreement constitutes acceptance of those changes. iNaturalist may also, in the future, offer new services and/or features through the Website (including, the release of new tools and resources). Such new features and/or services shall be subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement."

Privacy Policy:
"Although most changes are likely to be minor, iNaturalist.org may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in iNaturalist.org's sole discretion. iNaturalist.org encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change."

This is another area where best practices are discouraging sites from unilaterally updating policies without notifiying their users before an update. The absolute best sites notify their users before changes to legal terms and provide a change log describing specific changes.

A quick google search brought me to this page on privacy policy changes:

http://ilookbothways.com/2011/07/07/privacy-policy-changes-some-companies-get-notification-right-2/

Some background reading via the TRUSTe website:

http://www.truste.com/privacy-program-requirements/

These are required growing pains if you want iNaturalist to become a serious player in the online world. Don't let things get away from you - it just takes one upset user to file a lawsuit or go to the press to undo all this goodwill you have so carefully built up with your own users and your partner organizations.

-Eric

[Paul S. Hamilton]

I would get GBIF on this to do what they can from their side. They will be in a much better position to provide legal advice and perhaps even legal verbiage for the terms of service.

I would be strongly in favor of making this happen one way or another!

I could see a check box saying "Yes--I want my photos to be used by scientists around the world for biodiversity research!"

Paul Hamilton, PhD
Executive Director, The Biodiversity Group
(Formerly Reptile & Amphibian Ecology International)
Focusing on Life Overlooked
www.BiodiversityGroup.org
www.BiodiversityPhotography.org
hami...@raei.org

phone: (US) 520.647.1434

3901 W Calle Don Miguel
Tucson, AZ 85746 USA

[Winged Wolf]

I don't know.  I don't even recall Paypal notifying me BEFORE a policy change...only afterward.  I think this may be overly paranoid.  It should be enough to send out a notification by e-mail to all members, letting them know of the policy change and the data sharing.  I cannot imagine anyone objecting to what is being proposed, and that has to be considered as well.  The US is on a trend to being increasingly bound up in red tape, without regard for common sense, these days, and I don't think it's warranted to participate in that trend.  Who exactly do you think is going to try to sue iNaturalist because they don't want a scientific institution to know where they saw a red-tailed hawk last week?  Honestly?  That's just not going to happen, and saying 'well, it could', isn't enough reason to make all of this so incredibly difficult and complicated, when it doesn't have to be.

iNaturalist users are not the kind of people who would object to having the information they've collected used for scientific purposes.  Really, wasn't that the entire idea?

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Eric Hunt <er...@erichunt.com> wrote:

Ken-ichi,

When it boils down to it, you are a site that collects user-supplied data. That data is not yours to do with as you please. Ethically and probably legally you have an obligation to protect that data and give your users to full control over what you do with the data they supply.

I looked at your Terms of Service. From my layman's reading of your TOS, I don't think you have the rights to distribute user-supplied data to outside entities.

--
Winged Wolf
My Stores:
http://www.EclipseMetaphysical.com
EclipseMeta on Twitter
http://www.EclipseExotics.com
EclipseExotics on Twitter

[Chris Brown]

I agree. If I had data that I didn't want to be shared/used (such as for funded projects through my employer), I certainly wouldn't upload it to a community site. I also agree that the majority of people using iNat would probably feel the same way and think this sounds like a great collaboration. I don't even mind the "opt-out" vs "opt-in" in this case, which I just feel is fundamentally different from a site like Facebook. 

That being said, I would make sure that some of these loose ends are tied up. We, unfortunately, live in an extremely litigious society and as the developers, you are the ones who will be targeted by such actions. But again, there don't appear to be any specific laws at play here (I'm not a lawyer though), just best practices and what's going to be best for the users of the site. If some people are uneasy with the sharing, they have the option of opting out or deleting their data from iNat completely.

Anyway, just my $0.02. Keep up the awesome work of providing such a great place where like minded people can share what they know while providing actual, usable data to science.

-Chris

[Ken-ichi]

Ok, first of all, thanks for all the comments!  It's so great to have
an intelligent sounding board for stuff like this.

There are a couple of ways forward here.  One would be to change our
terms to grant iNat the right to share your *public* data, notify you
all, and make the whole thing opt-out.  I suspect that would cover us
legally, though Eric is right, we should talk to a lawyer.

We could make it opt-in and make a strong effort to encourage doing so.

A third way would be to allow Creative Commons licensing options on
observations, with a default setting and the option to change it for
individual observations, pretty much the same way Flickr does it.
That way if you choose to license your data I think we'd be legally
free to distribute it if we adhere to the license.  The GBIF data
would only include licensed content, with a reference to the terms of
the license.  This would also make the agreement not specific to the
3rd party, so if EOL wants access to the same data, they can have it
under the terms of the licenses.

I personally like the third option even if it's more work for me.  Thoughts?

Regarding legal liability: we actually are incorporated.  We should
really make this clear on our site, but Scott and I formed an LLC last
year to deal with liability and money issues. If we get hit with a
suit, it could destroy the site, but hopefully not us personally.

-ken-ichi

[Eric Hunt]

Ken,

Good to hear you're incorporated.

I personally would be very upset if a site changed their TOS to grant themselves additional rights to my user-contributed public data without making it opt-in. That's honestly something I can't believe is even legal. Again, my layman's understanding is that is known as a 'rights grab' and is a unilateral change of a contract, something that's generally not allowed. Same for a retroactive application of a creative commons license to existing data.

Now I would very much support adding a creative commons option for future observations and even making that the default license for future observations, and letting people know they can go change their existing observations to have a more liberal data sharing license. And obviously building some UI to make a mass license change super-easy for the users will help. =)

I personally feel your existing database of observations is not as valuable as you think/hope it is. This is where the attorney, one with experience in online communities, is going to be important in guiding you through the process of maximizing the sharability of existing and future data.

If you need to do some fundraising to support the effort to move iNaturalist forward I know I would be supportive with a donation. Lawyers are expensive.

-Eric

[Ken-ichi]

> I personally would be very upset if a site changed their TOS to grant themselves additional rights to my user-contributed public data without making it opt-in. That's honestly something I can't believe is even legal. Again, my layman's understanding is that is known as a 'rights grab' and is a unilateral change of a contract, something that's generally not allowed. Same for a retroactive application of a creative commons license to existing data.

I would too, but keep in mind we won't be sharing anything that isn't
already freely available to anyone on the website. Some of that info
could be used to identify you, but only if you've chosen to show it
publicly. I was proposing a ToS / Privacy Policy change mostly for
the purpose of clarification, not to make a substantive change in what
data we already publish.

I realize our collection of observations is rather small, but the
people we've spoken to at GBIF definitely seem interested, and others
(e.g. CalFlora) have expressed similar interest in data sharing
agreements, so I think there's at least perceived value there. And to
be clear, it's not like we're selling anything here! We're doing this
to make the data more useful.

-ken-ichi

PS Thanks for the offer of legal fundraising support! We may take you
up on it some day.

[Winged Wolf]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 5:36 PM, Ken-ichi <kenich...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I personally would be very upset if a site changed their TOS to grant themselves additional rights to my user-contributed public data without making it opt-in. That's honestly something I can't believe is even legal. Again, my layman's understanding is that is known as a 'rights grab' and is a unilateral change of a contract, something that's generally not allowed. Same for a retroactive application of a creative commons license to existing data.

I would too, but keep in mind we won't be sharing anything that isn't
already freely available to anyone on the website.  Some of that info
could be used to identify you, but only if you've chosen to show it
publicly.

I think opt-in is a fine idea, too, but of course, anyone complaining would have a difficult time making a case for their 'personal data' being shared, when that same data is actually published for all to see.  That's why I think it is basically a non-issue.  It's the difference between your posting a sign on your lawn that says something, and someone walking up and jotting down a copy of what's on the sign and handing it to someone else.  It's not as if the data is a secret, and it's really NOT personal.

[Eric Hunt]

I guess I've not been clear and I think there's some confusion because of it.

My concern isn't with personally identifiable information. It's with what rights we as users grant iNaturalist to our contributed data. Right now we only grant iNaturalist the right to display and use our observatrions on the iNaturalist site and nothing more. Any data sharing of our observations must be done within a proper legal framework and done using a proper legal process.

The fact that iNaturalist isn't *SELLING* our observations makes it an easier task, but it's a task nonetheless. Ken-ichi and Scott must establish a proper terms of service that outlines what they want to do *in every possible future case* with their user's data. And they must figure out a legal way to do that with already contributed user data. A lawyer is needed to guide them through that process - explaining how explicit or loose they need to be in the terms of service that are drawn up, showing them where the law is picky about things or lax about things, where the unexpected gotchas are, etc. What is their 3-5 year plan for monetizing the website? Exit/merger/buyout strategy? Answering those questions will impact the TOS they create.

These are basic business steps involved in the creation and running of a social networking website. Not very scientific but just as important in supporting the goals of the website.

-Eric

[Chris Brown]

All this is valid, but they are giving you the option to opt out if you don't want your data shared in this way. Just click the little box.

Chris

Sent from my iPhone

[Eric Hunt]

Chris,

First - this isn't about me. I've stated I'm in favor of the GBIF sharing. This is about doing the right thing with your user's data from a legal and ethical perspective. I read the initial email too quickly and missed that this has gone live. Well, if/when Ken-ichi and Scott talk to a lawyer they will find out if they've done the right legal steps or not by not making the GBIF sharing opt-in instead of opt-out and by not addressing this data sharing in their TOS.

I also want to address several comments from others that were along the lines of "well, no one would object to this, these are obvious things to do with this data!" Unfortunately business in the United States doesn't work that way. It takes one person raising a stink to do real damage to a brand and business if the legal stuff isn't thoroughly worked out. Good intentions versus the letter of the law/contract doesn't get you nearly as much forgiveness as it once did.

-Eric

[Joe Ford]

I just can't help myself. I have to reply. First, I am not a lawyer,
but have had some experience with copyright infringements. Second, I
am fairly certain that I will "opt in" with the current proposal, but
I will need to review the TOS at GBIF prior to making my decision.

That said, it is not clear if the images will be part of the "shared"
information. The link to the example data does not work, so I am
going to respond as if the images will be "shared". I am generally
fairly open with sharing my images, but I reserve the right to know
"clearly" what is to be done with them. I felt comfortable with the
TOS for iNaturalist in that they would not be used for commercial gain
without my expressed permission. Without reviewing the TOS from GBIF,
I do not know if they will also take the same approach with "my"
images. Yes, even though I have chosen to share my images with
iNaturalist they remain my images. I have not abdicated the right to
approve or disapprove them being provided to another organization.

That said, the "opt out" option would work for me, as I am currently
active at iNaturalist, but probably would not work for individuals who
are not currently active. One might think that stating (TOS) that the
contributor is responsible for keeping up with changes will protect
iNaturalist, but that statement does not "trump" copyright law.

On top of this, the entire copyright infringement liability issue may
soon be ramped up to a whole new level. There are two bills (one each
in the House of Representatives and Senate) that will change the
entire concept of data ownership and infringement liablity for the
internet if they become law. The intent of both bills is to put teeth
into the law to protect data from piracy. Some major data handlers
(e.g. Google and Wikapedia) have expressed great concern over the
bills as being too restrictive for their comfort.

I would recommend (remember, I am not a lawyer) that the "opt-in"
option would be much, much safer for iNaturalist. If a contributor's
image ended up on the cover of "National Geographic" without proper
accreditation and was provided by GBIF, you would have a positive
affirmation that you (iNaturalist) had permission to share with GBIF.

Just to repeat, I most likely will "opt-in". Copyright law is very
convoluted, and I would also recommend that a specialist in copyright
law be consulted. Remember, people have entrusted iNaturalist with
their data/images based on a specific TOS. iNaturalist will be
changing that TOS. "Opt-in" helps (in my opinion) protect iNaturalist
from future problems.

Joe



On Jan 19, 7:27 pm, Ken-ichi <kenichi.u...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
> e n

> We're planning on becoming a GBIF data provider.  The Global

> Biodiversity Informatics Facility (GBIF,http://www.gbif.org) is an

[Scott Loarie]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the great feedback on the opt-in vs. opt-out. Regarding Joe's comment, sorry the csv link is down. I pasted below what a record would look like for my obs: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15556, I formatted things vertically so they would show up better in this email.

A key point though is that none of data in the csv includes things that aren't already public, nor does it impact the ownership of the data ('rightsHolder: Scott Loarie' in this example) or the rights to own or display the photos. the 'associatedMedia' field would point to where the photo is stored (something like http://static.inaturalist.org/photos/29920/original.jpg if the photo was uploaded to iNat and something like http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5221/5587331107_cdcfdfb616_o.jpg if the photo was uploaded to Flickr, Facebook, or Picassa) but no one would be able to publish a copy of your photo through this channel any more legally than they could copy a public available photo from iNat and publish it - both would violate your rights as the photo rights holder. GBIF would be storing a local copy of the data in this csv (here's an example of a eBird observation in GBIF: http://data.gbif.org/occurrences/140148481 and a lion specimen from a museum in GBIF: http://data.gbif.org/occurrences/48234936 to give you an idea), but they would only store a link to the photo, and importantly if an observation is deleted from iNat it would be removed from GBIF within a few weeks.

I liked Winged Wolf's lawn sign analogy that we aren't making any data available thats not already public, just making it easy for GBIF to find this data, and I guess we would be authorizing them to store a copy of the data in the fields below on there servers that would lag behind data changing/deleting on iNat (that said Google cache's everything on the web, so if you delete your obs on iNat it will linger on Google for a while). Its great to hear everybody's feedback on this, if the consensus is opt-in I'd just want to make sure we properly encourage people to do this - so hope no one would mind some flashy 'Click here to contribute your data to biodiversity databases!' type banners.

Thanks again!

Scott

#Example record from the csv link
id: 15556
basisOfRecord: HumanObservation
modified: 2011-04-29T01:47:33Z
institutionCode: INAT
datasetName: iNaturalist research-grade observations
informationWithheld:
catalogNumber: 15556
occurrenceRemarks:
recordedBy: Scott Loarie
establishmentMeans: wild
associatedMedia: http://static.inaturalist.org/photos/29920/original.jpg
eventDate: 6/18/1998
eventTime:
verbatimEventDate: 6/18/1998
verbatimLocality: Pic du Paradis (St. Martin)
decimalLatitude: 18.08887956
decimalLongitude: -63.03755522
coordinateUncertaintyInMeters:
identificationID: 17516
dateIdentified: 2011-04-29T01:39:06Z
identificationRemarks:
taxonID: 36582
scientificName: Anolis pogus
taxonRank: species
rightsHolder: Scott Loarie

[Ken-ichi]

Eric, to clarify, while the opt-out GBIF preference is up and we
published the GBIF-ready archive for people to take a look at (should
be back now, btw:
http://www.inaturalist.org/gbif-observations-dwca.tgz), we have not
told GBIF that they should start the process of importing the data.
Basically all we've done at this point is publish the data you're
already sharing on the web in a different format, and I don't think
that violates anything in our ToS.

I get the privacy / intellectual property distinction. The
interesting question here is whether iNaturalist observations are
copyrightable. Your photos clearly are, and if you have a text
description then that is certainly copyrightable, but is a line like
"Homo sapiens, 2012-01-21, 38.5, -122.2" a copyrightable work?
Probably not, even if you include a URL to a copyrighted photo. But
when you mix in the description, then it probably is copyrightable.
Fun! I'm hoping Creative Commons licensing will get around this, but
you're absolutely right, we should talk to a lawyer. For the
supernerds among you who are interested in how US courts distinguish
uncopyrightable data from copyrightable works, check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

Another interesting question is whether iNat would be at fault for
publishing the copyrighted works (which I doubt, since our ToS already
grant us permission to do that over the Web), or if a third party like
GBIF would be at fault for copying and re-publishing them. Again,
more lawyer fodder.

-ken-ichi

[Eric Hunt]

Joe,

Good points, and one thing that you may not have realized, is that iNaturalist uses (unless something has changed) the photo storage at Flickr and Picasa for the photos. They just do an inline call to Flickr/Picasa to show the image directly from the Flickr/Picasa servers. Your photo is never copied over to iNaturalist. Otherwise the hardware requirements for iNaturalist would be orders of magnitude larger.

-Eric

[Ken-ichi]

We do store photos ourselves if you upload them directly to the site
or if you use one of the mobile apps. Imports from
Flickr/Picasa/Facebook remain hosted by their providers. And yes,
hosting photos is hard, which is partly why our photo hosting isn't
all that great.

-ken-ichi

[Charlie Hohn]

Wow! I too thought the point of iNaturalist was to share data
including with scientists/science groups so I am surprised anyone
cares about this. That being said I do hate it when Facebook changes
things without telling me so I can see the point of the opt-in thing.
Just don't make it for every observation, or I'll probably forget to
do so for a bunch of them.

Eric Hunt said "I personally feel your existing database of
observations is not as valuable as you think/hope it it" . I don't
understand the point of this comment. If you don't think the site/
observations are valuable, why are you here? What do you mean by
valuable? As someone who has spent many years mapping plant
communities and occurrences, any data that can be reasonably verified
with photo and GPS is incredibly valuable, and we suffer heavily from
lack of this sort of data. Maybe you mean you think it isn't
monetarily valuable, and maybe that is true in some ways, in the
current economy. But, this sort of information is very useful for
researchers, land managers, scientists, people who do things with
working landscapes, climatologists, etc, etc, etc,. I'm not sure what
your vested interest in this sort of comment is, but I don't think it
is very productive. I personally think that most of what is on
Twitter is useless but that's why I don't follow twitter except to
keep up on watershed stuff. I especially don't jump on Twitter's
feedback sites and tell them they need a lawyer/might get sued if they
share public information I posted on their site.

Anyway, back to GBIF, is there a way this can be a two-way exchange of
information? I think it would be really neat if, at least for
individual species on iNat, GBIF sightings could also be displayed, at
least by location and date. Again, that sort of information is very
useful to me (at least the plants)...

> >> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/inaturalist?hl=en.

[Eric Hunt]

Charlie,

You validated my position and then attacked me. Not cool. Feedback was asked for, it was received in the spirit it was given, and I feel like it was appreciated and taken to heart.

-Eric

[Ken-ichi]

Let's try to keep it civil, folks. Everyone has provided constructive
feedback, and we are indeed taking it to heart. Yes, iNat is about
sharing data, but "sharing data" can mean a lot of different things in
different contexts, and there are real risks to consider, legally in
terms of copyright law and personally in terms not betraying the
expectations of the people who contribute to the site. If any of you
have spent time participating in the feedback forums on other sites, I
think you know that the level of consideration and intelligence shown
in this discussion is a million times higher than the Internet
average. Let's maintain that high standard.

Charlie, regarding consumption of GBIF data, we actually do have a
button on the maps on the taxon pages (for taxa with ranges) that
shows GBIF records ("Show museum records"). Check out
www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Marbled_Salamander#taxon_map. We could
enable those maps for taxa w/o ranges too (like most of our plants).

-ken-ichi

[Charlie Hohn]

Hi Eric,

I didn't see my post as an attack, just a strong disagreement and
questioning of your comment. However, I see perhaps it was worded too
strongly and I apologize. I agree that there are concerns with
transferring data without people being aware, but disagree with your
comment that the data 'isn't as valuable as [Ken-ichi?] thinks' and
perhaps I misinterpreted the comment as an attack/criticism of the
value of the site rather than constructive feedback, so maybe you can
clarify. If not, I'll just move on to the next thread.

Ken, indeed since I am most interested in plants it would be great to
have access to that data!

C

On Jan 24, 1:23 am, Ken-ichi <kenichi.u...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's try to keep it civil, folks.  Everyone has provided constructive
> feedback, and we are indeed taking it to heart.  Yes, iNat is about
> sharing data, but "sharing data" can mean a lot of different things in
> different contexts, and there are real risks to consider, legally in
> terms of copyright law and personally in terms not betraying the
> expectations of the people who contribute to the site. If any of you
> have spent time participating in the feedback forums on other sites, I
> think you know that the level of consideration and intelligence shown
> in this discussion is a million times higher than the Internet
> average.  Let's maintain that high standard.
>
> Charlie, regarding consumption of GBIF data, we actually do have a
> button on the maps on the taxon pages (for taxa with ranges) that

> shows GBIF records ("Show museum records").  Check outwww.inaturalist.org/taxa/Marbled_Salamander#taxon_map.  We could

> ...
>
> read more »

[Ken-ichi]

Ok folks, so we now have Creative Commons licensing options for
observations, and we'll use your licensing choice to determine what to
share with GBIF. If you look at one of your observations, you'll see
a copyright notice on the lower right, with a link to let you use a
license. You can set a default license, and update the license for
all your observations. You can also make these changes by editing
your profile.

Right now all existing observations are unlicensed by default, so we
*won't* share them with GBIF. If you want to share, please use a
license. New users will have to opt-out of this.

If you've got thoughts or questions, fire away.

-ken-ichi

PS. Also turned on maps for all taxon pages, along with the GBIF
overlay, but it's not perfect. We're using GBIF's KML feeds via
Google, which means Google caches the GBIF content before serving it
to us. Unfortunately, if it takes more than a second or so for GBIF
to generate the data, Google serves us nothing until it's ready. I
think we need to not rely on the Google caching, but I probably won't
get to that for a bit.

[Ken-ichi]

Hey folks,

Remember this thread? Well, GBIF started indexing our observations a
month or two ago, and I finally got around to incorporating notices
about that into iNat, so if you look at older research-grade
observations, you should see an "External Links" section showing that
the observation was incorporated into GBIF. Here's an example:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/33273

Again, as per this discussion, GBIF should only be indexing
CC-licensed, research-grade observations, so if you notice that's
*not* happening, please let me know. We're hoping to start doing the
same thing with CalFlora very soon.

-ken-ichi

[Franco Folini]

Thank you for the great news!

The sharing of iNat data with GBIF and hopefully CalFlora gives more meaning to the time we invest in recording and validating observations.

Thank you Ken-ichi!

Franco

--

_________________________________________
Franco Folini
w: fol...@novedge.com | h: fol...@gmail.com

m: (415) 420 8748 | w: (415) 848 9018 x 708

[AfriBats]

Hi everyone!

I understand that observations need to be CC-licensed and research grade to be harvested by GBIF, and that it may take a while until the observations show up in GBIF. However, there are quite a few observations in our AfriBats-project that have been contributed a long time ago and although fitting the criteria (as far as I understand it) they would not show up in GBIF.

Any ideas why this is the case?

Thanks, Jakob

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Jakob

If you go here: http://data.gbif.org/datasets/resource/14026
And click on:
Access point URL:http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/gbif-observations-dwca.zip
you can see the data that iNat is sending to GBIF. So if the obs
you're mentioning are in this zip file, everything is working on the
iNat side and GBIF is being sent these data.

But I'm not sure how frequently they are harvesting this data and
incorporating GBIF - this is on their end. I thought it was every 4
weeks but it seems less frequent. By coincidence, I actually emailed
GBIF earlier today to ask this so hopefully will have more information
soon.

Best,

Scott

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Scott R. Loarie
www.stanford.edu/~loarie
Email: loa...@stanford.edu
Phone: 415-278-1220

Post-Doc, Dept. Global Ecology
Carnegie Institution for Science
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Stanford, CA 94305

Lecturer, Dept. Geography
561 McCone Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720

Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
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--------------------------------------------------

[AfriBats]

Hi Scott

Just checked the file and it indeed contains most if not all of the research-grade, CC-licensed observations. If I get you right, this shows what iNat is sending to GBIF, but not necessarily what GBIF has been harvesting from that file, right? What I don get is why, for instance, this observation is included in GBIF (added to iNat 21 Nov 2012)
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/151079

but not these (all added earlier):
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/131170
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136037
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140582

Cheers, Jakob

[AfriBats]

Hi everyone

I just searched on the iNat help pages for the specific terms under which iNat data are shared with GBIF and EoL but couldn't find anything. Under the account & profile page, this is given:
Licensing your content gives other people the legal right to use it without asking your permission if they stick to the terms of the license. iNat uses your Creative Commons-licensed content to share with data partners like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), an international, inter-governmental organization that compiles and distributes biodiversity information from around the world. Learn what these licenses mean.

It is only under certain licenses (both for the observation AND the photo) that data will be shared with GBIF and EoL, right? If so, I think this should be explained somewhere more prominently to encourage data sharing across biodiv platforms. I'm sure quite a few if not the majority of users are oblivious to the general terms and to the specific license conditions under which data are being shared.

Maybe this could be improved by 1) including a section on licensing & data sharing in the help pages and 2) something like a pop-up page, or a welcome email sent to every new user, which explains this point.

Cheers, Jakob

[Ken-ichi]

That's correct, we only explicitly share Creative Commons licensed
observations and photos with GBIF and EOL. The help pages are all
editable by site curators, so maybe you could add a page or a FAQ
clarifying this?

CC licensing is the default setting for new users, so there's not much
cause for concern over people not sharing enough. We should probably
still add a note to the welcome email.

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