[WikiEN-l] Wikimedian image restorations exploited on eBay

[David Gerard]

2009/9/18 Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com>:

> You're starting to touch on the vigorous debates that a few media editors
> have and which hardly anyone else understands.  Let's frame the terms of
> discussion properly, though: you begin from the debatable presumption that
> restoration and creative input are mutually exclusive concepts.


Restoration may well be a creative input, depending on the
restoration. Whether it generates a new copyright is another matter.
Probably doesn't in the US. Might elsewhere.

I suspect (as you've noted) that copyright may not be the right tool
for the job. (It would undoubtedly encourage restorations, but the
cultural price may not be appropriate. But that's getting more to the
philosophical.)

I think what we need to do - a practical action that we can do at
present - is more encourage a culture of crediting restorers. This
means naming the restorers, details of the restoration, etc. on the
image pages.

Noting the restorer is of course best practice, to be accurate about
image provenance if nothing else. Encouraging third parties to
actually do so is going to be a long and gentle process. It's hard
enough to get media reusers to credit an image with more than
"Wikipedia" when it's under an attribution licence, let alone list any
detail they're not absolutely forced to by law.

With the spread of free culture, I suspect credit will become more
common as a social expectation, which is why getting into crediting
restorers is a good thing to start now.


- d.