Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The site mentions that and some other problems, and just disclaimers their liability. One problem I didn't see mentioned directly is that some venues have additional bureaucratic rules. For example, I saw a writer-artist complain that they couldn't show the big ebook store proof that they'd licensed the art for their cover, since they painted it themself, and there was no documentation licensing it to them.…
Fwiw, i think wikimedia commons has some really good help pages on what is and is not public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Public_domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art_p... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:De_minimis Of course sometimes its just a risk trade off, and depends more on how the publishe…
You don't want a book's carefully choreographed launch sabotaged by various companies' Kafkaesque bureaucratic processes, while you're trying to finesse the algorithm and the publicity you've scheduled.
(I should've said upfront that I know a bit about public domain and copyright law as a layperson. And I also know that I can't necessarily point a CSR to law surveys if something gets flagged. I need to know the "do X and avoid Y" that is proven to actually work smoothly with all these companies' ideas of "copyright clearance", so that I hopefully never have to talk to a CSR.)