David Gerard wrote:
The other part of the problem is how to use images in compliance with the licence. To this end, I started http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse a while ago, with the intended audience being casual readers who know nothing about Wikimedia but who call up or email asking if they can reuse an image they saw on Wikipedia. Any improvements anyone can make for accuracy and *CLARITY* are most welcomed.
I think there is one important issue that precludes widespread reuse by responsible people: we make no warranty whatsoever about the correctness of the licences - and it's to be expected, since the licensing information is filled in by users on which we have no a priori control.
When people buy photographs from Getty and so on, they not only buy a photograph but also some kind of insurance that they can safely use them. If they get sued for copyright infringement, they will say "hey, I bought this photograph from Getty, who certified that it was legit! sue THEM!". But do they want to say to a judge "well, we downloaded this picture from this site, where it was uploaded by somebody called tiptop35 who said it was in the public domain".