[WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

[Geoff Burling]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Mike Finucane wrote:

>      I *do* have a
> problem if someone -say a newspaper - lifts one of my images from
> Wikipedia, and uses it instead of paying for their own photography, and
> makes a profit therefrom.

While I disagree with much of what you have said, I'll admit you have a
point there, Mike. One reason I'll never release images of my friends or
family under GFDL or CC is that I don't want to be surprised one day
by finding that their image has been photoshopped into an ad or a
commercial for a product or company. The only thing worse would be to
find that they've been photoshopped into a commercial supporting a
politician I despise so vehemently that I wouldn't piss on them if
they were on fire.

One could speculate whether this use amounted to some form of libel --
based on the assumption that association with a given product, service,
company or politician could be defamatory -- but in the case of dead
people, I don't think libel or slander applies. I'm not a lawyer, & I'm
not looking to start a discussion here on the matter, I'm just explaining
that I've found a simple solution by avoiding the problem.

But what _might_ be worth a conversation -- or at least a moment's
consideration -- is that introducing GFDL material into an advertisement
makes that creation GFDL'd too. By using free images (free as in speech,
not as in beer, as the cliche goes), the advertisement then -- at least
in part -- becomes free.

This may not stand up in court (the GPL & its related licenses have never
been tested in court to the best of my knowledge), but the legal uncertainty
there is strong enough that no businessman will lightly use material
released under a Gnu-like license. There are enough headaches in publishing
creative material: why further introduce those surrounding copyright &
trademark?

But I do wonder at the concept of a GFDL'd commerical, & how that might
play out in business.

There's more I could say, but I think a pointer to the lawsuit between
UC Berkeley & AT&T over the UNIX codebase in the early 1990s is sufficient.
Half of the people on this mailing list know how free software affected
the outcome of that case (& probably can discuss it better than I), &
the other half should read about it.

Geoff