Good morning,
We have just received this morning on the Bistro (ie the French village pump) a
deletion request for personality rights.
The photo has been taken in Caffé Florian at Venice.
That helped me to understand your confusion between first, the WMF
resolution, and secondly the Wikimedia Commons application.
The resolution seems to be related to pictures taken in private, not
in the public space:
"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."
"Ensure that all projects that host media have policies in place
regarding the treatment of images of identifiable living people in
private situations. "
I so think:
i. we should be especially polite and kind to the requester of such deletions
ii. we should delete picture taken in private space
iii. we should communicate competently in a calm, yet assertive way,
working with requesters to help them understand pictures of public
personalities taken in public space are legitimate in a democratic
society, in the balance between privacy and free speech.
On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 5:03 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> 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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--
Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson
http://www.dereckson.be/