I'd like to create a database with published photographs of some biological species to use them for scientific research, but I have questions according copyright law.
Can I use published images in a such manner? Can I give access to this database to my colleagues?
I'm from Russia and our law says that it is possible to use published images for educational and scientific purposes. Can I adapt this law to any published images or not?
Caveat: I am not a lawyer, especially a Russian lawyer.
You can, almost certainly, create such a database for your own use and for the use of your research group, so long as you don't make it generally public. So, for your use and that of your "colleagues" it should be fine. Just don't define "colleague" as everyone in my field.
So, you might need some specific mechanism to restrict access, rather than putting it on a public website.
Copyright law varies everywhere and mostly applies to "creative works". But images of all sorts (even selfies) are normally considered creative.
The fact that you have permission under the law to do some things ("using for educational/scientific...") doesn't imply that you have other rights as well. Normally the "publishing" right is maintained by the copyright holder for a limited period unless they explicitly give a license to the public (or to an individual).
So, it is likely that what you suggest would be a copyright violation if you were to "publish" your database unless you get permission or are very careful in selecting images. But it is the publishing that is the violation (if done), not the storage in a database, nor the sharing within a working group.
There are a huge number of "published photographs of some biological species" available online with generous licensing from the rights holders. Those you can reuse, according to the individual licensing. You should probably also cite them in any database, as well. Old photographs may be out of copyright also, and those can be used. Various museums do this sort of thing, for example.
There is one other consideration. Some people publish some things with "copyright notices" that don't actually conform to the law. In fact, some will "forbid" storage in a "database". I suspect that those restrictions can't be enforced so long as the database is used for a proper purpose and not published.
