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Black Holes and Revelations: Creative Commons and NASA’s Stunning Images

Posted on February 19th, 2009 in Online Writing by C Jordan
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Sourcing images, such as NASA’s stunning space pictures shown here, can be like a black hole, sucking in time and error. Here is a guide as to how to go about it the right way, and a blatant excuse to show some amazing images.


Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The Spitzer space telescope departing the Earth soon after launch.”  (Artist’s impression.)

(For those readers that would like more information about the subject matter of any of the images: click on “Image credit” under the pictures and this will take you directly to the relevant NASA page, which gives a detailed description.)

Copyright ©. It’s a word and symbol that one does not want to see when looking for images to illustrate an article!

It is the bane of a writer’s life. More time can be spent on sourcing images than actually writing the article itself.

At one time it must have been very time consuming and frustrating, having to write to each of the individual holders of the images’ copyright, for permission to use them. A permission which, in some cases, would have been very freely given. Alternatively others would be buying up copyright, from the sources, and charging for their use.

It is for such reason that Lawrence Lessig and others formed “Creative Commons”. According to Lessig, modern society is a “restrictive permission culture”… “a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past”. 

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Creative Commons “is a non profit organisation devoted to expanding the range of creative works for others to build upon legally and to share” (Wiki)

The organisation releases copyright licenses called Creative Commons Licenses, allowing the originators of material to decide which rights they want to reserve and which they give away for the use of others.

A common version of this will allow the photograph (in this case) to be used by anyone, except for commercial purposes. This means they can be used in education or business. They can be used in a Blog. If however that Blog is receiving pay per click views, or advertising revenue, then that constitutes commercial use and the image may not be used.

The ideal license for a writer is one that has no restrictions at all, merely, and quite rightly, a credit to the creator of the image.

There are other ways that images can be sourced. Take the following image for example.


“Super Massive Black Holes”  Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech                    “Galaxy NGC 3351”

This simple image that looks almost like vapour trails in a blue sky is in fact the subject of a NASA press release:

“Two supermassive black holes spiralling towards each other near the center of a galaxy cluster named Abell 400. Shown in this X-ray/radio composite image are the multi-million degree radio jets emanating from the black holes.”

Nearly all of the images sourced in this article are from NASA, at the Spitzer Telescope Site.

While not using Creative Commons Licenses, NASA has made many of its images free to use. NASA’s image use policy reads: “As a government entity, NASA does not license the use of NASA materials or sign licensing agreements.”

The first necessity, prior to downloading the images was to check the “Image Use Policy”.

Spitzer’s image use policy says that it does not license each image individually but that “Spitzer public web sites … may be used for any purpose without prior permission, subject to the special cases noted below.” One of those special cases was that, should a third party’s name be given in the images credits, then that person or body should be contacted for permission. Now although that is fair and reasonable, this obviously creates a delay in putting an article up for publication.

All the pictures presented in this article are the simple “no third parties” type (the third parties shown are part of the NASA, JPL or Caltech organisations, the parties covered by this permission).


Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Carey (SSC/Caltech)       “Where Galactic Snakes Live”


Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/P. N. Appleton (SSC/Caltech)  “Cartwheel Galaxy Makes Waves”

However, on other NASA sites there were fewer images that were attributable solely to NASA. Should any of those have been chosen to be used it would have required contacting third parties to get permission.

The Smithsonian Institute uploaded images on Flickr.

This also proved difficult, because of the Smithsonian not granting unpermitted commercial license.

An aesthetically pleasing aspect of the “free to use” images policy is that some artwork commissioned by NASA is also available for “sharing”.

The following pictures were available for use without contacting a third party.


Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech        “Asteroid ‘Bites the Dust’ Around Dead Star”


Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech                   “Double the Rubble”


Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech                    “Infrared View of Spitzer”

There are many others to view at the Spitzer Telescope Site, but to use them in this article would have required contacting the artists for permission.

Summary

When viewing galleries at sites such as NASA or other such institutions, the probability is that copyright may not be shown on each image. Therefore it will be necessary to read in full, and to fully comprehend, the Use of Images policy.

On other sites such as Flickr, most of the pictures will carry either a copyright (©) or a Creative Commons Licence. It is necessary to understand what the CC symbols mean.

Here are some examples and explanations:

 or     Attribution (by): Can be freely used but credit must be given to author

  Noncommercial: Can be freely used where there is no financial gain by the user

  No Derivative Works: Basically, use it but do not alter the appearance of it.

  ShareAlike: “Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.”
Image sources

A writer not following the guidelines has a couple of possibilities open to them.

They can either not bother publishing, or go buy their own rocket and space telescope to take pictures like these, themselves.


NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Rebull (SSC/Caltech) “Baby Stars Brewing in the Witch Head Nebula”

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