Ever since I started developing JungleDragon, I had some legal aspects in mind, particularly image licenses. You see, JungleDragon will be publicly hosting images posted by users and that means that copyright issues are inevitable. Up until now, I had a very simple implementation where users have to select the license that applies to the image they are uploading.

However, I noticed on other image sharing platforms that such a thing is never asked of users. The reason is quite simple. The legal consensus is that when you upload an image you own to a public website it is automatically copyrighted (all rights reserved). Other users need to ask permission to use that image outside of that website. 

Therefore, I adjusted the upload form. The license selection field is gone and any image you upload is automatically marked as copyrighted. Note that this does not stop any user from downloading and distributing the actual image. It is technically not possible to do so. Besides, JungleDragon is a photo community, not a personal photo storage service.

With this change, common users that upload and view images are not "bothered" with the legal aspect of an image, which is great. However, it is still possible for an image owner to explicitly set the license of an image in a dedicated screen called Edit license:

When users find the default license (all rights reserved) not suitable, they can overrule it here. They can choose between All rights reserved, Some rights reserved (showing the different Creative Commons licenses) and No rights reserved (Public domain). Upon hovering each choice, a green tooltip appears explaining the license conditions. With the checkbox at the bottom, one can indicate  that they want this license choice to apply to any future images that he or she uploads. There is an integration with the reward system too, the more open your license, the more karma points you get.

Once again, this license choice has no effect at all within JungleDragon. The license only indicates what you can do with the image outside of JungleDragon (redistribution). Whether you settle for the default or choose to overrule the license, JungleDragon will display the applicable license on image pages like so:

It displays the official names and logos of real-word licenses. Clicking through on this license gives you all the details. This set of changes brings a better usability, more control, and a better compliancy with copyright laws. 

And then there is the legal aspect of what comes into JungleDragon. It is of course very much possible for a user to upload an image that he does not have permission for.  For JungleDragon (me) it is pretty much impossible to find out whether that user owns that image or has a license for it. The recent YouTube versus Viacom trial showed that the legal consensus is that hosters have limited responsibility in such a matter, yet should offer a way for the rightful owners to take their content down. This has been implemented in JungleDragon already, it is called the Image report function:

The other legal requirement is obviously to respond in a timely manner to such reports.

All in all, I think these changes lead to a better legal compliancy and a better usability of JungleDragon. What do you think?

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