[WikiEN-l] Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right

[Ray Saintonge]

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Matt Brown wrote:
>  
>
>>On 7/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
><snip>
>  
>
>>>Today, we grab free images from sites like Flikr and don't even
>>>contact the photographer... What a tremendous opportunity to bring in
>>>more photographers. But it seems that, as a whole, Wikipedia is not
>>>that interested in attracting photographers.
>>>      
>>>
>>Whenever I use a photographer's work from Flickr or anywhere else
>>(CC-licensed, etc) I try and leave a comment on their photo.
>>Generally it's much appreciated.
>>
>>I think a big mistake in our Flickr-sifting efforts is that we provide
>>no feedback to those whose photos we use.  Perhaps just because it's
>>easier not to or something, but comments are encouragement, and people
>>who free-license stuff generally like to hear that stuff is
>>appreciated.
>>    
>>
>What particularly irks me about Flickr is that people can change the
>licenses on their photos; I came across a Featured Picture on Commons
>the other day which had been uploaded in December 2005, tagged as
>CC-BY-SA 2.0, had been uploaded to Flickr in November 2005, but when I
>viewed the photo in July 2006 the tag on Flickr was CC-NC-ND 2.0. The
>worst part is that the image on Flickr has no "history" page, and the
>Internet Archive doesn't have the page, so there's no way I can verify
>that the image was indeed tagged that way when it was uploaded to Commons.
>
This all comes down to a question of proof.  One needs to assume if the 
use of the photograph was legal at the time that it was used that use 
and all downstream uses that derive from it will continue to be legal.  
The downstream user will probably need to establish the chain of 
provenance in the event of a legal dispute.  It would be his 
responsibility to trace up the food chain to establish the freeness of 
the material.

For us, we probably need to be a bit more thorough in documenting our 
usage, particularly noting the date and time the material was taken.  
This may require archiving a download of a status file from Flickr.

Ec