With "public place" meaning
"public event where the presence of the
subject was advertised so it's not their private life", of course; as
opposed to taking photographs of a celebrity shopping in a
supermarket, for instance, which would not be fair game.
-- Rama
On 6 April 2012 02:22, Ryan Kaldari<rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
This is generally a straightforward decision per
Commons:Photographs of
identifiable people. If the photos were taken in a private place,
consent is
required. If the photos were taken in a public place, consent is not
required (with exceptions for some countries). What was the
justification
for not following the Photographs of identifiable people guideline?
Ryan Kaldari
On 3/10/12 8:03 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation Board published the following
Resolution:
---o0o---
The Wikimedia Foundation Board affirms the value of freely licensed
content,
and we pay special attention to the provenance of this content. We also
value the right to privacy, for our editors and readers as well as
on our
projects. Policies of notability have been crafted on the projects
to limit
unbalanced coverage of subjects, and we have affirmed the need to
take into
account human dignity and respect for personal privacy when publishing
biographies of living persons.
However, these concerns are not always taken into account with
regards to
media, including photographs and videos, which may be released under
a free
license although they portray identifiable living persons in a
private place
or situation without permission. We feel that it is important and
ethical to
obtain subject consent for the use of such media, in line with our
special
mission as an educational and free project. We feel that seeking
consent
from an image's subject is especially important in light of the
proliferation of uploaded photographs from other sources, such as
Flickr,
where provenance is difficult to trace and subject consent difficult to
verify.
In alignment with these principles, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to:
Strengthen and enforce the current Commons guideline on photographs of
identifiable people with the goal of requiring evidence of consent
from the
subject of media, including photographs and videos, when so required
under
the guideline. The evidence of consent would usually consist of an
affirmation from the uploader of the media, and such consent would
usually
be required from identifiable subjects in a photograph or video
taken in a
private place. This guideline has been longstanding, though it has
not been
applied consistently.
Ensure that all projects that host media have policies in place
regarding
the treatment of images of identifiable living people in private
situations.
Treat any person who has a complaint about images of themselves
hosted on
our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encourage
others to
do the same.
Approved 10-0.
---o0o---
Now, I am aware of a particular set of photographs on Commons, taken
in a
private situation. They were taken from Flickr by an anonymous
contributor
and uploaded to Commons. The images are no longer available on Flickr,
having been removed long ago. Over the past year, the photographer has
requested several times via OTRS that Commons delete these images.
He said
that the subjects could not understand how these images of them
ended up on
Commons, and were aghast to find them there. They were never meant
to be
released publicly. According to the deletion discussions, OTRS
verified
that the person making the request was indeed the owner of the Flickr
account.
Yet Commons administrators have consistently, through half a dozen
deletion
discussions, refused to delete the images, disregarding the
objections of
isolated editors who said that hosting the images in the clear
absence of
subject consent runs counter to policy. Closing admins' argument has
been
that licenses once granted cannot be revoked.
Yet according to the above resolution, Commons should not be hosting
these
images. Not only was consent not obtained – an endemic situation – the
images are kept even though consent has been expressly denied. Why
are these
images still on the Wikimedia Foundation server?
I am happy to pass further details on to any WMF staff, steward or
Commons
bureaucrat who is willing and able to review the deletion requests
and OTRS
communications, and remove the images permanently. Andreas
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