Greetings,
I am happy to draw the attention of active Wikimedia User Group in Africa
to a just concluded discussion on Wikimedia Commons where it was
established that images taken by community members at Wikimedia events may
be attributed to the user group provided all the photographers (who are
community members) agree to it rather than wrongly uploading them as "Own
work" by the organizers.[1]
There are cases where organizers of Wikimedia event upload images taken at
the event as 'Own work" when they are clearly not the photographer who took
those images (such as the Iranian Wikimedia User Group issue that led to
the discussion). When told to correctly attribute the works, they sometimes
say " My camera was used, so I am the copyright holder" , " I organized
the
event" or "The images were taken by some members of the user group and I
don't know who took XYZ images" . Yes, this is possible if different people
were asked to take images either with their personal camera or equipment
belonging to the organizers. Regrettably, these images usually get
nominated for deletions by Commons's user per the community precautionary
principle (COM:PRP) if not properly attributed [2]
In the course of the discussion I noted above, a user created a template
for Iranian Wikimedia User Group which was really useful in resolving the
aforementioned copyright issue. I am drawing the attention representatives
of user groups to this template with the hope that they can adopt it and
use it when a case like this occur.
Regards,
Isaac.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/…
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Iranian_Wikimedians_User_Group
[2]