[Commons-l] People trying to withdraw their released images

[Cary Bass]

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Joe Szilagyi wrote:
| Posting here as sometimes the admin noticeboard seems a bit too quiet...
|
| I've seen comments that this is happening more frequently now, where
| [[User:Foo]] will suddenly say, "I withdraw
| release/copyrights/permission/I just want all these 20-100+ images
| removed from Commons". I had one that I reverted on 10 or so images the
| other day where the uploader wanted images--good ones at that--from 2006
| deleted because Google was indexing them on Commons. They were all
| images of random streets in another country.
|
| Should the upload forms be more clear/explicit and politely in-your-face
| that once material is released under copyleft/GFDL, you can't
| technically undo that?
|
| - Joe
|

And before we get too hard-nosed about this, there are instances where
we want to grant the individual the right to withdraw
protection--believe it or not there are instances where people are
actually not aware of the full implication of what free licensing means
when they uploaded (yes, it takes some stupidity, but we are nice
people, believe it or not).  There are other possible reasons that are
good faith rationale.  We should make every attempt to address their
concerns of course, and explain that if something has already been
reused there's nothing we can do about it on that end, but we should be
willing to remove their media in order to maintain good relations, which
has a great potential to spread and evangelize to our free media culture
in the future.

Of course, if their work has already been distributed widely across our
projects, we'll certainly have to take that under consideration.

I might also add that it is pretty darn easy to distinguish when someone
is withdrawing their license in a good faith manner and when it's "I'm
taking my toys and bringing them elsewhere."

"Do no harm" is the operating principal.
- --
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator

Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia
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Fax: 415.882.0495

E-Mail: cary at wikimedia.org
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