Removal of the watermark endpoint

We are announcing that, effective immediately, the v1/images/image_id:uuid/watermark/ has been removed due to critical security, stability, and reliability issues. All future requests to that endpoint will return a 404 response.

Reason for Removal

  • Security: The endpoint used low-level libraries and posed unresolvable vulnerabilities.
  • Stability: It was unreliable and often raised server errors which led to 5xx responses.
  • Usage: It had no real-world use-case, which contributed to its negligible usage.

Rationale for Immediate Action

The removal was necessary to safeguard platform reliability. Although we do not have a formal versioning policy yet, unsafe and unstable endpoints are subject to immediate discontinuation when justified. This endpoint has been marked as deprecated for a significant amount of time, to allow any users to switch away from using it.

Impact

This change is expected to have minimal to no impact due to the endpoint’s lack of practical usage. This change will have no impact on the Openverse.org search engine as it was not a consumer of this endpoint.

Questions

For concerns or assistance, contact us via email.