How licences are checked before anything is published

Everything in this archive comes from open sources, principally Wikimedia Commons. We accept only files whose licence permits redistribution: public domain, CC0, and Creative Commons licences that require attribution.

The check is semi-automatic. A script reads each file's metadata, compares the licence field against an allow-list, and discards everything else — including files with unclear status and files restricted to non-commercial use.

Attribution is stored in the manifest alongside the file, shown on every item page, and collected in full on the credits page. If you are the author of something here and want it removed or the credit corrected, write to us and it will be done within a day.

This is slower than simply collecting attractive images, and it costs us a proportion of the good ones. But it means the archive can be used without exposure, and that the people who did the work are named.