Understanding the Creative Commons License
Overview
All Umbra data is provided to customers under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Creative Commons, the nonprofit that created and maintains CC BY 4.0, provides a plain language explanation of the rights and limitations of the license on their site here.
The CC BY 4.0 license is extremely permissive compared to traditional satellite data licensing schemes--it is considered an "open" license, meaning all data purchased from Umbra can be shared openly (although many customers will choose to keep their purchased data to themselves). While Umbra will always remain the underlying copyright holder for data provided to customers, our licensing strategy allows customers to:
Freely publish the data, with attribution, under the CC BY 4.0 license
Resell our data, at a profit, without paying a royalty to Umbra
Create derivative works, like analytics, and sell them at a profit (again, without paying a royalty to Umbra)
If you're accustomed to purchasing satellite data from other suppliers, you may be surprised by the rights afforded to you by our license. Buying from us is simple--one license and one price. For everything. In legal-speak, you have the right to share and adapt the data.
Attribution
When you share or adapt Umbra data, though, there is one important rule: you must give Umbra credit. Specifically, Creative Commons 4.0 calls for:
Attribution parties
Copyright notice
Notice that refers to Public License and notice that refers to the disclaimer of warranties if supplied
To the extent practicable, URI or link to the material
Indicate if you modified the material; retain an indication of previous modifications
Indicate the material is available under Public License and include text/URI/link
Remove attribution information upon request to the extent reasonably practicable
All reasonable to medium, means, and context
If you bought imagery from us and then published it for the world to see, unedited, you might attribute us this way:
SAR data © 2023 Umbra Lab, Inc. (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
Here's an example of how you would credit Umbra if you purchased imagery from us, extracted features from it, and then published that derivative dataset publicly for others to see and download:
Data derived from SAR © 2023 Umbra Lab, Inc. (originally licensed under CC BY 4.0)