I was wondering if there is some kind of organized effort to ask
photographers and image agencies for donations (read: GFDL- or
CC-licensing) of images.
I am thinking especially of images that we cannot take ourselves; dead
celebrities for example (and no, don't go grave-digging ;-)
There must be a huge amount of photos that have next no no commercial
value anymore, because they are not good enough for a magazine cover,
but would do well for documenting an encyclopedia article. Of course, we
would prominently credit the source in the image description (which will
be transcluded to every wikipedia that uses it), or even in the image
title. Images could be watermarked, of course, and for largeer amounts
of photos, we'd create a category, gallery and all. Repeaded mentioning
(in a good light!) in a project of the wikimedia magnitude might be
worth more than paid advertisement, fo virtually no cost.
We could even offer a service: I'm sure some of us have
(semi-)professional film scanners (I do). Deal goes like this: mail us
your films (encyclopedia/commons-style only; not your family picknick;-)
and a note that releases them under GFDL/CC/PD/whatever, and we'll
upload them in high-res on commons, where you can download them. Free
film digitization!
With people on commons obviously interested in media, there must be some
of us with ties to "the industry" who can initiate such contacts. "The
Yorck Project" already donated a lot of PD images, as you might
remember. If we can get just a few photographers/companies to release
images as well, others might follow just to not lag behind.
Magnus