On 07/09/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Pictures of living people also have restrictions on them. In some jurisdictions, there is in fact no way for any model release or contract to remove all restrictions; the person depicted still has some rights over the image. Pictures which contain living people even incidentally are also restricted, especially if no model release or contract has been signed. The picture as a whole is PROBABLY legally non-problematic, but if cropped down to show only a person or group as the main subject would be a problem.
Yes... well probably it would do no great harm to have much stronger requirements with regards to model releases and the like. I don't think policy on this area is complete. Morally we have more of a responsibility to develop something watertight here, but from a legal perspective trademarks seem more dangerous to me due to large companies' deep pockets (and attraction to the courts).
If commons goes down the road that any restrictions on use at all except those specified by GFDL or CC-By-SA are unacceptable, then Commons will be a repository only for public-domain art (but beware of those copied without the consent of the current owner!), pictures of landscapes and growing things (but even then, beware! Some landscape features have been trademarked ...) and suchlike. That Commons is nearly useless to me, and I will not use it or contribute to it.
OK, but you don't need to be so dramatic. No one wants to see that happen. It's not like I am the last authority on policy anyway -- I posted this to get other people's opinions, not merely inform you before it was enacted. ;)
I didn't think this up to be the ultimate killjoy. I thought it up to try and solve some of the contradictions I see in how we handle images today. Do you think the Pringles image is free? The German logos?
What about version 2: instead of applying to all registered trademarks, apply to all registered trademarked logos. This should remove the ridiculous cases like you mentioned above (car body shapes, landscape, device designs etc). But still includes Pringles boxes & German logos.
cheers, Brianna