Warning About pngkey.com
Thursday, February 6, 2020 - 00:24
Came across the site pngkey.com. They claim to host public domain resources only. However, much of what can be found on the site is under copyright & clearly not eligible for public domain. So be careful if you choose to use anything from them.
They are hosting some assets from OGA, claiming they are public domain, which they are not. Fortunately, they seem to be very quick about removing assets when they get a complaint.
Any examples/URLs of non PD stuff taken from OGA?
--Medicine StormI'm sure there is more, but takes time to find them as there are so many images. I think they just use crawler bots to scan the internet even though they claim their content is manually submitted.
I see a ship from Skorpio's construction kit here: https://www.pngkey.com/detail/u2q8a9i1e6t4a9q8_spaceship-medium-size-ope...
...and some more LPC stuff: https://www.pngkey.com/detail/u2r5a9y3e6r5t4w7_universal-lpc-sprite-male...
The primary issue seems to be pngkey entries all say "no attribution required" which is incorrect on anything other than CC0 (or possibly GPL). However, only the author of the original work could submit a copyright complaint. If anyone sees entries that violate the terms of the original license, please post them here on this thread and inform the author.
I encourage authors to click the "copyright complaint" button on the pngkey pages if attribution is important to them.
--Medicine StormI see, thanks for the info, what are the alternatives though?
@Roisin: I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking for. Alternatives to what? 'What is the alternative to using pngkey.com?' Well, any site that actually respects the terms of art licenses. When uploading to Pngkey, there is a free-text field for the image license, but this doesn't appear to have any effect on the "no attribution required" message on each download page.
--Medicine Stormtheres no actual 'author' of the person/s uploading the content to the site, so no one to complain to or about, no one to give the 100 lashings to. ;) seems anyone can just upload.
Chasersgaming | Support | Monstropolis |
Indeed. Attribution is essentially impossible. ...not sure why you would give lashings to the author, though. Or do you mean, 'no one listed as the uploader, so who do we hold to account?'
Although I applaud the nobility of trying to make a public domain art repository, I feel like the whole site is in need of an overhaul to be viable; images can be posted anonymously, with no information about authorship, source, etc. There are so many trademarked and copyrighted works belonging to the corporate giants, it's only a matter of time before the lawyers of Marvel, Warner Bros, etc. flood them with DMCAs. Ironically, the Copyright Complaint page is itself plagiarized from cleanpng.com/kissping.com, which I guess wouldn't be such a blatant ripoff if they are run by the same company, but the whois information shows two entirely different registrars.
--Medicine Stormyes, the uploader, give them 100 lashings. ;)
sites like this are 'Piracy' at its best. With uploaders not having to leave thier name, and use a made up email address everytime, its a bad website.
Chasersgaming | Support | Monstropolis |
Wow! Apparently they didn't even bother to correct all the spelling mistakes in their plagiarized DMCA policy statement. Talk about putting zero effort into making your site appear to be even slightly legitimate. :-\