FathomNet Data Use Policy
FathomNet relies on its community of contributors and is committed to being transparent about how image and video assets as well as annotation data will be used and shared. The FathomNet Data Use Policy balances the need for distributed metadata sharing while simultaneously providing protection for data contributors wanting to maintain copyright of their valuable visual content and annotation data.
● Contributors of image and video assets (which we refer to as visual content) to FathomNet can do so through the FathomNet Portal, FathomNet Database, FathomVerse, and/or FathomVerse ID.
Users of the FathomNet Portal understand that their visual content can be made available in the platform for private, restricted, or public use as described in more detail in the FathomNet Terms of Use www.fathomnet.org/terms. Your private visual content will not be shared with other users of FathomNet. Visual content deemed public can be viewed by any account holder in the Portal; restricted content may be included in search results within the Portal but requires access to be granted by the content owner to view. For visual content you decide to share outside of the Portal, you will have the opportunity to select the format, which Creative Commons license(s) to apply, and the destination of your data export, which may include other FathomNet applications.
Contributors of visual content to the FathomNet Database and FathomVerse agree to the FathomNet Terms of Use www.fathomnet.org/terms or FathomVerse Terms of Use www.fathomverse.game/terms, and contributors will select from one of the following Creative Commons licenses when sharing visual content outside of the Portal: CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, or CC-BY-NC-ND. Contributors submitting their visual content to FathomVerse ID may do so following the FathomVerse ID Terms of Use www.fathomverse.game/terms-id, and contributors must select the CC-BY license for these submissions. Contributors of visual content to the FathomNet Database, FathomVerse, and FathomVerse ID should be aware that their data may be shared with appropriate watermark and attribution outside of the FathomVerse app using native, in-app sharing functionality (as described in the FathomVerse Terms of Use www.fathomverse.game/terms). Visual content and metadata submitted to FathomVerse and FathomVerse ID will also be shared with the FathomNet Database once enriched with annotation data. Visual content in the FathomNet Database that is licensed as CC-BY may eventually be archived by third parties (such as NOAA-NCEI), and imagery with the same license hosted on FathomNet-maintained URLs may be transferred and hosted by third parties such as NOAA-NCEI. Visual content in the Database is intended to be solely used for training and development of machine learning algorithms; it is not intended to be used as an occurrence dataset.
Visual content will remain available in FathomNet and associated FathomNet applications for so long as the image or video is hosted on a public URL. We encourage you to make your visual content available to FathomNet on a perpetual basis, but a contributor may remove its visual content from FathomNet by either taking down the URL hosting the visual content, or by contacting the operator of FathomNet for assistance at fathomnet@mbari.org.
● Anyone creating or submitting annotations to FathomNet will be able to do so through the FathomNet Portal, FathomNet Database, and/or FathomVerse. A Portal or Database user has the option to make their annotations available for public use in FathomNet and associated FathomNet applications in accordance with the level of access or Creative Commons license (CC-BY or CC-BY-NC) selected by you. The operator of FathomNet will have sole and exclusive ownership of annotation data created or modified in the FathomNet Database and FathomVerse, and will make this annotation data available for public use in the FathomNet Database.
Interested FathomNet Portal users can fill out an expression of interest form, and they will be contacted by a member of the FathomNet team. This user guide provides more information on how to make contributions of visual content and annotations to the FathomNet Database. Inquiries for contributing visual content to FathomVerse can be made by emailing fathomverse@mbari.org. Contributions of visual content to FathomVerse ID can be made in-app, which can be downloaded on the App Store or Google Play.
We may update this data use policy at any time and such updates will be effective immediately. We will make reasonable efforts to provide you with advance notice about any material changes to this data use policy.
In addition, FathomNet users agree to the following terms:
Acknowledgements - Anyone using FathomNet for a publication or project acknowledges FathomNet (e.g., include references to our publications). If you are sharing your work via a presentation or poster, please include a FathomNet logo on your materials.
Enrichments - The user contributes back to the FathomNet community by creating how-to videos or workflows that are posted on FathomNet’s website or YouTube channels, posting trained models on FathomNet Models, promoting or participating in FathomVerse engagement activities, contributing training data, and/or providing subject-matter expertise to validate submitted data for the purpose of growing the ecosystem.
Benevolent Use - The data is to be used in ways that are consistent with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.