Whilst browsing over the QI candidates page I noticed this image:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:EM_Spectrum_Properties.svg.
The image itself is licensed as public domain. However it is a
derivative of two images licensed under the GFDL
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:P_biology.svg and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyscrapercompare.svg). Unless
I am misreading something quite badly, releasing a derivative of a
GFDL-licensed work to the public domain is a violation of the GFDL.
It is easy to fix one image, but I suspect we have deeper problems
throughout the project with a lack of respect for copyleft.
Establishing just how serious this issue is will be non-trivial, never
mind resolving it.
I can think of a number of approaches to this situation, some of which
are obviously harmful to the project and/or the free content movement
as a whole.
* Ignore the terms of the GFDL (or any other copyleft licenses) in this context.
* Treat them the same as any other copyright violation.
* Contact the creator of the derivative and inform him of the
pertinent terms of the original license; and ask him to change the
licensing on the derivative.
* Changing the licensing on the derivative work to be compatible with
the original work, and inform the creator of the new work of the
change and the reason why.
Furthermore we probably have the difficulties associated with of a
CC-BY-SA work and a GFDL work being combined. I'm no lawyer, but I
suspect to truly sort these cases out will need an additional release
from some of the creators of the original works.
If we cannot enforce the copyleft terms on our own community, can we
really expect external groups to?
Of tangential interest: http://bayimg.com/
Apparently "completely uncensored". ("We will not remove any pictures
that are just immoral or in any way legal to host under Swedish law."
- well, still seems like they'll have a lot of removing to do, to me.)
They use a tag system - e.g. http://bayimg.com/tag/background .
uploading is ultra quick.
cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
An author has contacted me to use some of my photographs in a book (a
big, serious, scholarly, several-volume thing). He contacted me, and
several other users, after seeing images on Commons. Consequences:
1) Commons does get some visibility, and provides images to serious
work. Cheer up, people !
2) The author is enquiring how I wish to be credited. What do you
people think would be a concise yet effective way to mention Wikimedia
Commons in such cases ?
Cheers !
-- Rama
>
>From: "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
>
>Anyone making a bit of beer money from contributions to Commons and
>wants to let ORG know?
>
>
>- d.
I had mentioned earlier this week that I had used a few pics on a
magazine and a book, but costs are more than sales for those. I did
however use one photo (and today have permissions for more) whereby
the cost of 50 postcards was $20 and profits from sales would be $30.
I was going to make a donation to Wikipedia or Wikimedia with the
small profit in the new year from the Wikicards.
Wayne Ray
My watchflickr tool [1] includes an option to upload an image with a
suitable CC license to commons using a "bot" account [2]. So far, I
have received no complaints about bad uploads, and from its gallery it
seems OK as well (except some duplicate uploads).
Now, anyone can upload an image to flickr, and release it under
CC-BY(-SA). Same as wikipedia, right? Except that wikipedia uploads
are probably screened much more thoroughly for cases that are clearly
not under the given license.
My CommonsHelper tool [3] eases the transfer of images from wikipedia
to the commons, and has been used a whooping 93435 times this year.
Assuming that every use results in an upload on commons, over 330
images /per day/ enter commons this way, a not unimportant proportion
of the 5000 uploads per day, especially considering that it will only
take images that have a commons-compatible license.
However, users still have to save the image on their own computer,
then upload them under their own user account, which is annoying and
time-consuming.
CommonsHelper does have the functionality to do direct uploads via the
aforementioned bot account, however, that has been deactivated since
forever, due to concerns.
I would like to propose the reactivation of that feature. Concernes
about unsuitable uploads through the bot account are superflous, IMHO,
since images are screened thrice this way:
1. On the wikipedia where the image was originally uploaded
2. By the CommonsHelper (e.g. it will reject "fair use" images from en)
3. On commons, by the usual suspects :-)
Which is two levels of screening more than direct uploads to commons,
which were, last time I checked, enabled ;-)
With SUL in sight, new uploads will shift from wikipedias to commons,
but there's still a lot of images around:
en : >766,000 (but that includes "fair use")
de : ~119,000 (no "fair use")
fr : ~37,000
All in all, I'd estimate that there's between 0.5 and 1 million images
on the wikipedias that would be suitable for commons. You can see how
"save locally, then upload manually" annoyance can scale up :-)
Cheers,
Magnus
[1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/watchflickr.php
[2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:File_Upload_Bot_%28Magnus_Manske%29
[3] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commonshelper.php
Anyone making a bit of beer money from contributions to Commons and
wants to let ORG know?
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suw Charman <suw.charman(a)gmail.com>
Date: 24 Oct 2007 17:04
Subject: [ORG-discuss] CBDE: Examples of businesses doing interesting
things with photos
To: Open Rights Group open discussion list
<org-discuss(a)lists.openrightsgroup.org>
Hiya,
The Creative Business in the Digital Era wiki is coming along -
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/creativebusiness/ - and we now have a
blog too! http://www.openrightsgroup.org/creativebusiness/blog/
We are starting to flesh out the list of possible case studies a bit
more - thanks to people who've already started adding stuff to this
page http://www.openrightsgroup.org/creativebusiness/index.php/Research_Areas.
We're particularly interested in case studies that involve photography
- there are a few examples already listed, such as Flickr, Fotolia and
Moo, but it would be good to both have a bit more detail about how
these are open IP services, and to find any others that we can add to
the list.
I've started adding overview pages for the case studies that I know
something about - they are just really short "who what when where"
type pages, e.g.
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/creativebusiness/index.php/Case_Study_-_Lawr…
just designed to give us an glimpse of what is going on in that
particular case.
It would be great if anyone interested in this project could help us
out by adding similar pages for the other cases. Please note the page
naming convention: Case Study - Name of project/person - Overview.
We're just trying to keep things consistent.
Finally, if you are on any other mailing lists where people might be
interested in this project, please do let them know what we are doing!
Cheers
Suw
------------------------------------------------
Creative Business in the Digital Era
Wiki: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/creativebusiness/
Blog: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/creativebusiness/blog/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/creativebiz
Del.icio.us tag: http://del.icio.us/tag/org-cbde
Email: creativebusiness(a)openrightsgroup.org
_______________________________________________
ORG-discuss mailing list
ORG-discuss(a)lists.openrightsgroup.org
http://lists.openrightsgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/org-discuss
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(Sorry, new comer to this ML, I didn't found the way to reply directly
to Rama's e-mail)
I was also contact by the same person (I suppose, according to Rama's
description) for the use of 12 of my pictures!
My work is done to be reused, but 12 pictures (+ those from Rama,
/Magnus, etc./) is a much, isn't it?
Can't we ask this publisher for a small insert to promote Commons as an
exchange!?
With all the money they will save using our pictures, I think it's a
good deal for them.
What do you think about that?
Aoineko
-----------------------------
*Rama Rama wrote:
*An author has contacted me to use some of my photographs in a book (a
big, serious, scholarly, several-volume thing). He contacted me, and
several other users, after seeing images on Commons. Consequences:
1) Commons does get some visibility, and provides images to serious
work. Cheer up, people !
2) The author is enquiring how I wish to be credited. What do you
people think would be a concise yet effective way to mention Wikimedia
Commons in such cases ?
Cheers !
-- Rama
Well, actually, we did this a week or so ago. Now we can celebrate
reaching 1013 FPs. :)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/1000FP
If you want to do any interesting analysis or facts that would be great.
For example I know our POTD is used by several other Wikipedias. It
would be good to get a list of which ones, to show how Wikipedias are
using our FP content.
cheers,
Brianna
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/