On 07/09/06, Matt Brown <morven(a)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