[WikiEN-l] New York Times: Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People

[Anthony]

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Andrew Turvey <andrewrturvey at googlemail.com
> wrote:

> I had an interesting conversation with a senior BBC exec on this the other
> day. Apparently, their lawyers aren't sufficiently comfortable with the
> copyright violation checking on Wikimedia Commons to be able to rely on free
> photographs, so they don't use them. Bizarrely they'd rather pay someone for
> an image, and hence be able to sue them if they had copyright problems, than
> get it for free.


Same reason I'd rather pay a store for my furniture than get a "great deal"
from the back of someone's truck, basically.


> Which brings to mind an interesting business proposition.....
>
> :)


Seriously...that'd probably work...  Get independent confirmation of
copyright status from the individual image contributors, buy a decent
liability policy, and guarantee the copyright status of the images in
exchange for a fee.  Might make certain community members hate you though, a
la Mr. MyWikiBiz.