Comment by cornstalks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cornstalks | Hacker News Reader

> When placing a SkyFi order for Existing or New Images, you’re purchasing a license to a digital image.

I was curious what the license was and found their FAQ, for those curious:

> What is SkyFi’s licensing policy?

> SkyFi has the most user-friendly licensing in the satellite industry. You are free to share purchased images on the web and social media (and we encourage you to tag us @SkyFi.App or #SkyFi). Please make sure that provider and SkyFi attribution is clearly visible on all shared images. You are also free to use the images to do analysis and sell the results of that analysis. You cannot re-sell images you purchase on the SkyFi platform, nor can you sell products you create that contain the images themselves. Please click here for more information on the SkyFi EULA (End User License Agreement).

Seems fairly reasonable, though I haven’t read the full EULA.

I wish I was creative enough to have some cool ideas I could do with this imagery.

I have to hard disagree on the reasonableness of a licensed image. Firstly, I’m the one framing the shot. This isn’t a photographer making art, this is me paying a company to point a camera at xyz coordinates and capture the earth as it is, unprocessed. So if I personally plan out the perfect beautiful shot, now SkyFi gets to pitch it to others to make additional money off it?

Secondly, calling this “democratized” satellite imagery is a farce. Democratized to me means here’s the pixels you bought, it’s yours to do whatever you want with.

I didn't read their site in detail, but usually you're not actually framing the shot. You're buying images that they've already taken. Imaging satellites don't let you task the angle or direction and they simply continuously take pictures of anything underneath them as they pass overhead.

The linked page prominently talks about pricing for existing images from a catalog of existing images, OR paying for an entirely new image

"An entirely new image" probably means them buying either time on an existing satellite passing over your spot or just buying a set of pictures from a provider and hoping that someone else will buy a picture nearby too.

It's not like a satellite will fire its rockets to get to that position.

This is a contract of sale? There's no copyright, surely, as they're but creative images - they bound by technical restrictions not artistic ones. AIUI slavish recreations don't attract copyright.

Maybe in USA there's a carve-in for satellite images?

Not sure how space treaties fit with copyright; what's the jurisdiction, is it where the satellite was launched from?

The jurisdiction question is an interesting one.

>Not sure how space treaties fit with copyright; what's the jurisdiction, is it where the satellite was launched from?

According to the Berne Convention it is the country you publish it from. The country you took it from doesn't matter

If you copy an image as it's broadcast off a satellite then, no copyright exists (?) in the image, you can then publish it first and sue the satellite owner if they publish the same image?

I'll have to review Berne as that seems inconsistent with copyright existing from the point of creation of a work (I know that there are late-publishing rights too). If you publish an image I took, but I did not publish, what would be the jurisdiction -- of your assertion is correct this would seem to be indeterminate.

I think they are way overestimating how much an average person – who is not building a commercial product – cares about sharing a satellite photo on social media. Given those licensing terms I'm struggling to think of any use case for this site. Who is their target customer?

Their final point means that you can't use these in a youtube video, even if you only show them for a few seconds and spend way more than the cost of these images on your video.

Is that true? I would think a YouTube video would fall under the first part, sharing on the web/social media. You don’t sell a YouTube video, you distribute it

There are people doing reactions to content so I feel like an analysis that includes the video from SkyFi should be okay.

If you monetize the video then you are using it for commercial use. Anything in a monetized YouTube video requires you to get a commercial license unless fair use applies. Most content creators knowingly ignore this and just pray that they don't get sued or have their channel taken down from the massive amount of copyrights problems they have. So for at least for games this strategy has worked well unless you make a publisher mad. Entire sites like Twitch are built on top of people infringing game's copyright like this.

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