I know that we can reject submissions based on third-party photos, but is that really enough? Stealing someone else’s work and passing it off as your own leads to all sorts of potential legal difficulties. Shouldn’t it be treated in the same way as other abuse?
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For what it’s worth, you can through the “Report” button at the top of your review screen.
We (Ambassadors) continue to push for a text box to include additional information such as photo source.
I do consider most 3rd party photo usage “abusive,” however some I am willing to chalk up to laziness or lack of understanding and not atrocious abuse. I do take things case by case and pay attention to an area if I think it’s widespread or an isolated issue.
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Interesting, I was thinking more when the photo does match the wayspot but it’s from StreetView or some other source entirerly.
Regarding this matter, may I ask:
- if you submit the same photo to both Google Map and Wayfarer, will you get reported as stealing 3rd party’s photo?
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Hello and welcome!
This situation has come up before and in both cases I can recall the photo was removed from Wayfarer. Why? Because it’s not always obvious where the photo was used first and the existence of it on another database means Niantic doesn’t have sole ownership.
You’re entirely welcome to take multiple photos when you’re preparing to nominate and upload the photos to Google that you didn’t use for Wayfarer. But I would avoid adding the same photo even after approval.
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Resurrecting this post after getting several third party photo nominations in review today. Something needs to happen when a reviewer flags a photos as third party. I include a link to where I found it. Too many of these get accepted.
The report option pointed out does not seem correct when the place isn’t fake.
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Agreed. btw, here is the relevant part of Niantic’s Terms of Service - Niantic Terms of Service – Niantic Labs
You represent and warrant that you own all your User Content or you have all rights that are necessary to grant us the license rights in your User Content under these Terms. You also represent and warrant that neither your User Content, nor your use and provision of your User Content to be made available through the Services, nor any use of your User Content by Niantic on or through the Services will infringe, misappropriate or violate a third party’s intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy, or result in the violation of any applicable law or regulation
Put in a non-lawyerly way, in order for Niantic to use your submission in the game the copyright owner must grant permission. You can’t grant permission for somebody else’s work. I think it’s a serious violation of the TOS and should be treated more harshly.
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